


Smoke and Ruin

by Devilbaby



Series: The Chronos Saga [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical levels of Violence, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'd explain but it's a spoiler, Major Character Death (Sort of), Mental Illness, The Boy is still not alright, The Boy still needs a hug, Time Travel Shenanigans, and probably some Valium, crap i can't believe i forgot to tag for mental illness im an idiot, rest assured your fav will not stay dead, still Five-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-02-29 19:24:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 27,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilbaby/pseuds/Devilbaby
Summary: After being abducted by the Commission Five returns and is apparently in perfect health. Apparently.





	1. The Prodigal Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read part 1, "Ashes and Dust" you probably should otherwise this isn't going to make much sense.
> 
> Side note: I wanted to post this a couple days ago but my little one bought home a stomach bug from school and being the generous child she is, shared it with the rest of the family. It's been a fun week. (Yes, the username is an homage.)

**9:34 pm, Monday September 2nd, 2019**

  


It's been four days.

Four days of questions with no answers, of steadily building frustration like a boiler with a broken valve. Four days with no word, no sign, no whisper of where Five had gone. The Commission had stolen him right out from under their noses and none of them had any idea how to get him back.

They didn't even know where to begin.

Luther wasn't optimistic enough to hope for something as mundane and helpful as a ransom note. It was the Commission, they hadn't wanted money; they'd wanted Five.

They should have seen it coming. _He_ should have seen it coming. It's not like Five hadn't been warning them the whole time (as long as he was able to) and at first they were all on high alert. But then a week passed, and then another and another and they began to hope that maybe Five was just being paranoid. That the Commission had given up. That it was really over. 

It was what they'd all desperately wanted to believe so they had, lulling themselves into a false sense of security. All except Five. But then the regression started and suddenly they had much bigger, much more immediate, much more tangible things to worry about than the vague threat of retaliation from some nebulous shadow organization. 

He sees now how clever the Commission had been. How they'd waited, circling like vultures until the family were all too exhausted and heartsick and ground down to think straight. Until the spirit of the Umbrella Academy had stretched to the breaking point and they'd nearly forgotten about the Commission completely.

Until Five had been incapable of even the slightest resistance. 

_("I heard a rumor you didn't want to hurt anyone.")_

Luther drops his face into his hands and has to admit they've been expertly played. That _he's_ been played. (Way to go, Spaceboy. How many other siblings are you going to lose on your watch?) Because this whole mess is at his feet. He's the leader, he should have seen it coming, should have prepared, should have- 

"Hey," Allison says, taking a quiet seat beside him and Luther scrubs a hasty hand over his eyes.

"Hey," he croaks out in response, voice rough-hewn and sounding exactly like someone who's trying to pretend they're not on the verge of breaking down. Not that it would have done any good; he's never been able to hide anything from Allison.

To be honest, he's grateful she's here. Grateful she stayed on instead of going back to California (and Luther's not too proud to admit he'd literally begged her not to go, only to be told it wasn't necessary).

 _"Claire has Patrick,"_ she'd said, _"And however we feel about each other now, he's still a good father; she'll be taken care of. You guys on the other hand need all the help you can get."_

_"You miss her though."_

_"Every day. But I can't leave things like this. Five needs us."_

She places a gentle hand on his shoulder and he finds himself flinching at the contact. He feels poisonous, a cursed monkey's paw destined to bring ruin to everyone around him and he doesn't want her getting too close. He doesn't want to fail anyone else. He can hear Klaus' voice in his head _"Don't give yourself all the credit"_ and he knows it's right but he can't help it. 

He was the leader.

Maybe he'd been sent to the moon for a reason.

"Klaus and Ben haven't found any record of a Temps Commission in any of the libraries they've checked," Allison is saying, "and Diego says there's no one with the first or last name of Hazel matching his description anywhere in the city. He may not even be in this time period anymore." _And he may not be willing to help even if he was_ Luther thinks. It didn't matter; 'Hazel' had only ever been a long shot anyway. One more desperate straw to grasp at, just like everything else they're doing.

He pulls himself out of his well of self pity long enough to form an answer. "So where does that leave us?" Nowhere, same place they started. He knows that but he wants her to keep talking. It helps having her near.

"Vanya and I will keep checking the camera feed." 

After Five lost control of his warp ability they'd started up the house surveillance again, the easier to find him whenever he vanished without warning. They'd already examined the footage from the day he'd been abducted (horrible word that, with all the connotations it held but he can't bring himself to call it anything else). Six men in suits wearing masks, different from those worn by Hazel and Cha-Cha but just as garish and ridiculous. Three briefcases between them. They'd compromised the lock and come in through the front door, splitting off into three teams of two, sweeping the mansion room by room until they found what they were looking for. One of them neutralized Grace almost before she could react, nearly hacking her head off with something akin to a machete. Another picked up Five, his body limp and unresisting in their arms. They left as quickly and unceremoniously as they'd come, zapping away while the family was still downstairs pointlessly squabbling with the Handler. The whole thing had taken less than twenty minutes.

"What if we- what if he never-"

"Hey, don't talk like that," she says, her small hand rubbing gentle circles on his back. "We'll find him."

"How?"

She bites her lip. "I don't know."

He snorts softly. "Me neither." What good was a leader who couldn't lead, who didn't know which direction to march? "Maybe Diego should be the leader."

"It's only been four days; don't give up on yourself so soon, okay? And don't give up on Five, either."

He nods a bit reluctantly, taking a deep breath and willing himself to believe her. It's not easy; his sense of self has taken some pretty big hits over the last few months. "Yeah, I just- I mean...I'm Number One, right? And I've got this big, strong body but I feel..."

"Helpless," she provides.

"Yeah."

"I know, me too."

When he finds his voice it's smaller and more frightened then he wants it to be. "I don't know what to do, Allison. I don't know how to get him back." Then again, neither did anyone else apparently.

Whatever Allison is about to say gets interrupted as Vanya comes rushing into the room. "Guys, I think I found something."

  
  
***  
  
"Here," Vanya says, pausing the tape. They were huddled together in the surveillance room, staring at one of the small black and white monitors. "This is time stamped almost two weeks ago." Luther leans forward, peering at the grainy footage. It was an aerial view of Five's room, camera aimed at his bed. He can clearly see Five laying on the bed, still and quiet, lost somewhere inside his head. There's a flash in the lower right corner, almost out of frame and the figure of a man appears, his back to camera. He steps forward and Luther can make out the handle of a suitcase clutched in his hand. 

"The Commission," Allison says icily and Luther nods. 

"So that's how they knew where to find him," he adds, "but why didn't they grab him then?" 

"No time," Vanya answers, "watch." On screen the man turns his head a fraction, looking towards the door and then disappears in a crackle of energy that momentarily disrupts the camera feed. Diego walks in only moments later, a plate of food in his hands. 

"That still doesn't make any sense," Luther says. "Diego's tough but we've seen the Commission fight, we know what they can do and he would have had the element of surprise. Besides, Grace never mentioned anyone being in Five's room." 

"It might have been during one of the periods she was recharging," Allison says.

"It doesn't give us anything more to go on though," Luther sighs, disappointed. 

"I know," Vanya says quietly, her eyes falling. "I'm sorry. They kept their back to the camera."

"It's okay," he says, putting a hand on her shoulder. It wasn't her fault they were fumbling around in the dark. "It does prove they've been watching us this whole time. Must've gotten a real laugh out of it all." There's a acrid taste to the words, their bitterness coating his tongue.

Vanya tries to smile but he can tell she's still blaming herself anyway, just like he is, just like they all are. He tries to find something else encouraging to say but the words shrivel on his tongue and everything seems so...inadequate. What could he offer her besides more useless platitudes and hollow encouragements? What difference would they make anyway? He gives her shoulder an awkward pat and leaves without saying anything at all.

  
  
***  
  
He slams the refrigerator door too hard and hears a muffled crash as everything tumbles together. Whatever. Just one more mess, at this point. He'll clean it up later. 

Behind him Klaus raises his eyebrows but doesn't say anything. Klaus has actually been uncharacteristically quiet lately and Luther can't help but think it's probably for the best right now. That likely makes him the asshole in the room but witty repartee had never been his area and at the moment the idea of trying to tolerate any level of pithy banter sets his teeth on edge.

For all that, he can tell his brother has something on his mind from the way he keeps looking at Ben. (He assumes it's Ben).

"You might as well say it," he says as he washes out a coffee cup with methodical slowness. 

"Say what?"

"Whatever it is you're thinking."

"I'm thinking he's still alive," Klaus replies and Luther feels his shoulders stiffen as he swallows around the bone in his throat. "I can't make contact, so..." 

"You couldn't contact dad, either," he says without thinking.

If the barb stings Klaus doesn't let it show. "That was different," he says simply, "I was high. I was really, _really_ high. Hell sometimes I had a hard time seeing Ben."

"Doesn't mean he's alive," Luther counters. He doesn't know why he's arguing the point. He doesn't _want_ Five to be anything other than alive and well, though he'll settle for 'alive' right now.

"It's a good sign he's not," Klaus counters, seeming unbothered by Luther's capricious mood.

"What difference does it make?" he asks sharply, even though he knows it makes all the difference in the world. "We don't know where he is, we don't know how to find him, we don't even know _when_ he is and I can't- there's nothing I can-" he feels something rising inside him like bile, clawing it's way up his throat and he realizes he's shaking.

"Hey, hey," Klaus says, materializing at his elbow. "Take it easy, big guy, c'mon, sit down and breathe, okay? You fall over you're gonna leave a dent."

Luther nods in acknowledgement, over-sized body sinking awkwardly to the floor and the part of his brain that isn't a static buzz wonders what's wrong with him.

"There, yeah, that's good," Klaus says, fluttering around him like an insect, "You stay there, deep breaths okay? I'll go get some-"

Luther will never know what it was Klaus was going to go get because at that moment the kitchen lights up electric blue and there's the familiar crackling sound of an energy charge and the smell of ozone and the next instant Five's standing there, looking dazed and lost.

"F-Five?" Luther asks, not trusting his eyes. He's dreaming right now, has to be. He'd fallen just like Klaus said he would and cracked his head open on the tile and- and he looks at Klaus but Klaus is staring at Five so he must see him too. Five tracks the sound of Luther's voice and blinks at him. His mouth opens but before he can speak his eyes roll back into his head and he topples over. Luther watches it play out in slow motion: the serpentine waver as his knees buckle, body folding in half on the way down and Luther thinks if he could just _move_ he'd have more than enough time to reach him before he hit the floor but he feels like he's planted to the ground by invisible roots.

"Shit," Klaus curses, scrambling towards him but he's not fast enough and Five crashes down in an unceremonious pile of limbs. The sound of body striking tile shakes something into place in Luther's head, the gears start turning and he can move again. He darts after Klaus, who's at Five's side already and rolling him onto his back. "He's breathing," he says, glancing up at Luther with an odd mix of relief and worry scurrying over his face. 

"Go get the others," Luther says, his voice hoarse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always comments and constructive criticism are always welcome. Also I don't have a beta so if you see an error go ahead and point it out.


	2. Shadows Breathe

**11:08 pm, Monday September 2nd, 2019**  


"He's sleeping," Pogo announces as he comes shuffling out of the medical room, looking older and frailer than usual, the silver in his fur seeming more prominent tonight. But the events of the last few months have taken their toll on everyone. 

"Is he okay?" Vanya asks and Pogo nods. "As near as I can tell, he's simply a bit dehydrated. Of course we'll have to wait for him to wake before we know if his mental faculties are effected, but physically he seems unharmed." 

Vanya sighs in relief. It's as much as they could hope for right now.

"Do you know how long he'll be out?" Klaus ventures but Pogo shakes his head. 

"No indeed Master Klaus. Though I advise someone keep watch until he wakes."

"Yeah no shit," Diego mutters, which earns him a disapproving frown. 

"I'll do it," says Luther immediately.

"I-I'd like to stay too," Vanya offers and in the end it seems everyone is reluctant to leave. But five siblings all hovering around watching someone sleep is ridiculous even by their standards so it's agreed Luther and Vanya share the first vigil and the others will content themselves with regular check-ins until it it's time to switch. 

The medical room is a cold, surprisingly caliginous space that has always reminded her more of a morgue than a surgery. Five is stretched out on one of the narrow recovery beds, thin thread of an IV line disappearing into his arm. She sits next to him, taking his hand even though she knows he'd object. It's just another of the myriad ways he's changed, one more casualty of a forty-five year battle to survive. She doesn't know if it was growing up alone that had done it or if it was the years he'd spent working for the Commission. Maybe both. But she still mourned the brother who - at least around her - had always been capable of surprising gentleness and affection. It was one of the only things in her life that had ever made her feel special.

Luther on the other hand keeps his distance, settling into a chair by the door and Vanya can tell by the set of his broad shoulders and the hard line of his jaw he's acting in the capacity of a sentry on guard duty more than caretaker brother and she wonders if he's afraid of getting too close. She's not sure what he thinks might happen and doesn't know how to ask. Was he afraid of Five, or for him?

Five's hand is cool against her own and she rubs it absently as she watches the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She studies his face like a map and he looks so young it almost breaks her heart; she wants to cry for all the years they never had. She's reconciled as much as she can to the reality that he is twice her age now; a sixty year old man with a lifetime of experiences behind him. But even if she understands it intellectually, her heart still only knows him as thirteen.

At least they hadn't hurt him. Not physically anyway and she hardly knows what they could have done to his mind that would be worse than what they've already faced. If it weren't for the fact they were in the medical wing it could be like any other evening of late. Any one of an endless number of sleepless nights she's spent at his bedside, watching him sleep.

She glances over at Luther who's staring at Five with an unreadable expression. "You don't trust it."

He doesn't deny it. "When has the Commission ever done anything good for this family?"

It was a fair point. "At least he's back," she says, giving his hand a small squeeze. "Whatever happens now, he's here with us."

Luther's quiet for a long time before answering softly, "That's what worries me."

  


*****

  


"Vanya?"

The voice whispers down through silty layers of sleep, prodding at her conscious. She's dreaming about an ancient city of moss covered quartz in the middle of the jungle, watched over by giant beasts with blood red eyes. Somewhere nearby her siblings are roaming through the undergrowth, looking for a lost prince. (He's hiding among the stars with a lasso around the moon, trying to pull it from the sky-)

"Vanya."

She opens her eyes as the moon falls, thoughts fragmented and white, scattered like a meteor shower and it takes her a moment to blink away the distortion. She raises her head from where it's pressed against her arm, body half folded onto the bed. She recognizes that voice...

"Five?"

It _is_ Five. He's looking at her (he's _looking_ at her) and his eyes aren't empty anymore but focused and sharp and there's a small, unsteady smile teasing the corners of his mouth that twists her heart in three different directions. He looks like himself again; she's missed that smile. "Hi," he says weakly, voice in shredded ruins. 

Several things happen inside her and all of them are painful in one way or another, though not necessarily unpleasant. "Five?" she asks again, more hope in the word than before. Hope that he's actually seeing her, that this is real. That she isn't still dreaming. 

The moon is falling out of the sky and she's falling with it.

He nods. 

"Oh God..." she chokes, and can't stop the tears. "Five!" He's _seeing_ her and _answering_ her...it's more of him than she's seen in weeks and she feels like a shipwreck victim at the first sign of rescue; white sails and helicopters appearing on the horizon.

Across the room Luther wakes up wincing, haven fallen asleep with his neck bent at an angle. "Wha- he blinks, doing a double-take. "Five?"

Five looks over at him, "Hey."

"You- are you...here?"

It's Five's turn to blink. "That's- a really dumb question. Even for you." His voice creaks like a rusty hinge but it's such a Five sort of thing to say that it makes Vanya laugh through the tears. God she's missed him so much.

"Not as much as you might think," Luther says, still cautious and it's telling that he hasn't immediately sent for the rest of the family. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Just like that, Five closes up, face going blank. "I'd rather not talk about it," he says, which is absolutely _not_ the right thing to say.

"I think you should. Do you know what's happened the last few days?"

"Can you not interrogate him thirty seconds after he wakes up?" Vanya asks, a protectiveness flooding through her. Luther looks like he wants to argue but doesn't. Luther never argues with her anymore; his way of still trying to make amends for everything that happened the week of the apocalypse. She tries not to use it against him most days but...well. He was right that the questions needed to be asked; she knows that and even agrees with it. She just doesn't think they need to be asked right now. 

"All right. I'll- I'll let everyone know you're awake," he says slowly, shooting Vanya a secret look that isn't secret at all (Luther had a lot of qualities but subtly had never been one of them). He doesn't want to leave her alone with their brother.

She give him a look of her own _I'll be fine_ until he turns and trundles out, glancing back one last time before the door closes. 

She turns back to him with a smile she hopes isn't too patronizing. "How are you feeling?" It means everything to her that he can answer her.

He seems to genuinely consider the question. "I've been worse," he offers.

There's too much to say, too many questions, confessions. Too much to talk about. Did he even remember the last few months? "God- we've been so worried about you. We thought-" she doesn't know how to continue. She isn't Allison but she's still afraid to say the words out loud, afraid her voice will somehow give them power, start everything all over again.

 _We thought you were dying, thought you were dead, thought you were losing your mind (you did lose your mind). Do you know where you are?_ Who _you are?_ Everything she wants to say and ask and feel starts swelling up inside her, egged on by the steady rhythm of the monitor keeping faithful track of his heartbeat. 

"Vanya," his voice slices a path through the turmoil in her head just as it had through her dreams, his hand a gentle pressure on her arm, "It's okay." 

She shakes her head, a hand over her mouth as the tears spill over. She doesn't know if it's okay or not. Nothing's been okay for such a long time now and she's afraid to hope...too much has happened and is happening and will happen and the moon fell out of the sky (her fault, her fault) and-

"Vanya, he says again, voice a bit stronger. "Focus, okay? It's all right. _I know_ , I remember."

The metal surgical instruments stop rattling in their pan. "You do?"

He nods. "I remember everything."  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im much better at writing angst than the happy reunions afterwards. Sue me.


	3. Over Bored and Self Assured

**4:38am, Tuesday September 3rd, 2019**

Luther hangs back, watching his siblings each have a turn talking to and fawning over their invalid brother. For his part Five tolerates their ministrations with the thinnest veneer of civility until he finally loses patience and shoos them away in an agitated flailing of arms and hands and a scorching commentary on their general lack of acceptable boundaries or respect for personal space. 

All in all he lasts about three minutes. 

Luther doesn't join in the festivities much. It's not that he isn't happy to have Five back; his is, and the relief is so palpable it makes his bones feel like water. But they've underestimated the Commission before and Luther doesn't plan on doing it again. There's got to be a reason they sent Five back and he doubts it was out of the goodness of their hearts. That means there are questions that need answers and the sooner the better. 

Vanya was right; he doesn't trust this, doesn't trust Five right now and that probably makes him the bad guy but somebody has to be; might as well be him. 

After all, he was the leader.

He clears his throat. "If everyone's finished hand holding, we need to talk." 

"Yeah," says Diego, which surprises Luther a bit. Granted they were all trying to be better as a family but he and Diego could still turn each other cross-ways without much effort. "Cause you've been gone a couple days, man."

"Have I?" says Five, and Luther can't tell if the question is genuine or not. "...I don't remember." He actually looks upset at the revelation, which makes Luther think he's probably telling the truth. But that only raised a lot more questions. Big, worrisome questions. 

All the flags turn red and Luther finds himself crossing his arms in uneasy anticipation. "I thought you said you could remember everything," he says carefully.

Five shrugs. "I remember more than I want to."

"Like what?" he challenges.

Five gives him a flat look. "I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"That's not good enough," Luther says, voice growing warm despite his best efforts to remain neutral. "You've been gone for days, and we need some answers. What do you remember?"

Five stares at him, jaw set and eyes shooting off sparks like a fire pit and for a moment Luther doesn't think he's going to get anything out of him. Five glances around but the rest of the family is quiet, waiting. They all have the same questions Luther does, and they want answers too. He scoffs angrily but gives up. "I remember forgetting my whole life, all right? I remember wishing I was dead, and wishing I'd remembered to load my gun." A feral smile curdles the corners of his mouth. "Happy now?"

Luther swallows but refuses to be cowed. He can't back down from this; it's too important. "No. Are you saying you don't remember anything about the Commission, or the last four days?" Five doesn't say anything and he feels his frustration rise at the silence. ""You were _abducted_ , Five. The Commission took you. Now you've been gone four days and none of us know where; we don't even know how you got back. So if you remember anything about that you need to tell us, all right?"

Something like surprise flickers over his face. "If the Commission's involved I've probably been gone a lot longer than that."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Five sounds as frustrated as Luther feels. "I've already told you, the Commission exists outside the time stream; they don't follow a linear path. What's a few days here could be weeks, months, even years for them. So if what you're saying is true, who knows how long I've really been gone."

"If?" Allison asks at the same time Luther says, "It is."

Klaus talks over both of them. "Wait, wait- so you're saying you've been gone for years?"

Five glances at him, exasperated. "Do I _look_ like I've been gone for years?"

"Why does that matter? You didn't look like you'd been gone for years last time you came back either."

"He's got a point," Diego offers.

"What do you mean 'if'?" Allison asks again, her temper starting to flair. 

Luther can see the whole conversation about to get derailed, breaking down into typical Hargreeves' style bickering and he can't let that happen. For whatever reason Five isn't on his game right now; there are chinks in the armor he usually wore and Luther needs to exploit them and get whatever answers he can before Five closes up again and he can't do that if he lets his siblings run away with the conversation. "Guys!" he shouts, and Luther can be very loud when he needs to, voice amplified by a huge animal chest and massive lungs. Things quiet down immediately and they all turn to him. "Let's focus, okay?" He looks at Five. "You seriously don't remember anything about the Commission or where they took you?"

"No, nothing about the last couple days; I've already told you that."

"Why do you suppose that is?" Vanya asks, looking worried.

Five sighs, "Well obviously because the Commission doesn't want me to."

"So that meas they're hiding something," Luther says.

"Yes, Luther, good job," Five says patronizingly, acid burning away at the edge of the words. Well, if nothing else he certainly _sounded_ like himself.

"What do you think it is?

Five pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have no idea. The Commission has a lot of secrets; nobody knows them all. They may just not want me to remember where I've been." He wrinkles his face at their blank stares. "They have headquarters and facilities all over the world across every era in time and then some and not all of them are talked about. I could have been taken to any one of them."

"How do we know they didn't...do something to you?" Klaus asks.

He shrugs, giving a small scoff as he drops his arms. "We don't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Five was a bit hasty when he said he remembered _everything_ but in his defense, how would he know?
> 
> Anyway I had a whole like, 6 hours with nothing to do today so have another chapter where nothing happens. 
> 
> (The chapter title is Five's entire persona and also the lyrics to a Nirvana song. Miss those guys.)


	4. What Becomes of Little Boys Who Run Away from Home

**4:41am, Tuesday September 3rd, 2019**

That's not an answer that does anything good for Klaus' peace of mind and the asshole in him observes that at least meant the status quo was being upheld. He tries sharing a look with Ben but Ben is busy studying Five, concern etched into the lines of his face. Klaus looks back at his brother but there's nothing new to see there; just Five looking tired and pale but whole at least, his mind apparently intact again. Apparently. Maybe. 

"What is it?" Klaus whispers conspiratorially but Ben just shakes his head, ponderous frown carved into his face like wood and Klaus really hates it when he does that. What was the point of having a brother only he could talk to if he kept everything to himself?

"Is it just the past four days you can't remember?" Vanya's asking and Five pulls his shoulders into a half shrug, staring at his hands.

"I think so, but I can't be certain." He gives a wan smile that's too stiff to be anything but forced, "It's not like I can remember what I've forgotten."

"Does that mean the Commission has a way to tamper with people's memories?" Luther looks alarmed at the possibility and Klaus can't really blame him. That was some crazy-ass Total Recall type shit.

"Not necessarily; they may have just kept me unconscious the whole time, though they do have some very advanced technology at their disposal. They can do a lot, but I don't know everything they're capable of." Five is clearly bothered by the implications, and it says something that he's _clearly_ bothered but why the hell not? If Klaus had been told someone had possibly messed around with his brain while he was asleep he'd be freaking right the fuck out.

"If they were able to fix your memories they might have been able to tamper with them, too." Allison says, and Klaus thinks that of all of them she probably understands the implications the best.

Five's got a look on his face and if it were anyone else Klaus would identify as shame, but he can't recall Five having ever been ashamed about anything so it was kinda hard to tell. "I agree," he says, "Which is why I probably shouldn't hang around."

That gets a solid round of unilateral rejection from everyone in the room, Klaus included. Five going anywhere wasn't going to do anything but send the rest of them into varying degrees of constant anxiety and they've already played that game, thank you very much.

Vanya shakes her head. "Five, we just got you back; I don't want you to go anywhere. You're safest here with us." A murmur of agreement winds it's way around the room.

He looks down for a moment before meeting her eyes, oddly hesitant and the word _shame_ flashes through Klaus' mind again. "But you might not be safe with me."

"I don't care."

"I do."

She reaches out, covering Five's hand with her own and Klaus watches him tense, still uncomfortable with gentleness. Five acted like softness of any kind was an anathema to him, particularly if there were witnesses. But he allows it because it's Vanya; she had certain privileges the rest of them didn't. 

Not for the first time Klaus wonders if the entire apocalypse could have been avoided if Five had simply never made that doomed jump into the future in the first place. His disappearance had hit Vanya the hardest, even if the rest of them had been too far up their own asses to notice. If he'd never time traveled, he would have been there. Their lives might have played out very differently. It might have been enough.

"Please don't go anywhere," she says softly. 

A lot of things happen in Five's face but Klaus can't identify most of them. Since coming back from the future Five's been a cipher; emotions encrypted behind a firewall of disdainful superiority and caustic, world-weary cynicism that Klaus has almost given up trying to hack. Not that he hadn't always been disdainfully superior; he had, even as a kid. But he'd been everything else too: a playful, mischievous, temperamental little asshole...whatever he was feeling in the moment he'd been both unashamed and unafraid to display and consequently Klaus never had any problem knowing exactly how things stood with Five on a given day.

The brother who left would have had a hell of a lot more to say about the future other than "it's shit". 

Five looks down again but nods in silent acquiescence and Vanya offers him a small smile of gratitude, curling her fingers around his. 

Klaus feels very much like he's intruding on a private moment despite everyone else being in the room too. "I'm ummm...gonna go get something to eat. You hungry?" he asks Five, who looks surprised by the question. 

"Yes," he says slowly, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.

"Cool, cool. What is it- peanut butter and jelly, right?"

"Peanut butter and marshmallows," Five corrects, and Klaus bobs his head. 

"Ah yeah, that's right. Okay, so- I'll be back." He gives them a quick, easy smile and beats a hasty retreat, Ben falling into step beside him. 

"Peanut butter and jelly?" Ben asks him once they were a safe distance away.

"At least he remembers what he likes," Klaus says nonchalantly, but even dead Ben is smarter than that.

"It was a test, wasn't it? You really think the Commission messed with his head." 

Klaus shrugs. "Good way of seeing how much he remembers. Who outside of this family knows he eats fluffernutter sandwiches? That is not the sort of thing an assassin admits to anyone."

Ben shakes his head, still troubled. "Whatever they did, I don't think it's going to be that easy to detect."

Klaus pulls up short and turns to look at him. "You think so too." He wishes it could be a question; they both know it isn't.

"Did you notice his voice?"

Klaus blinks, momentarily thrown off course as he tries to remember if there was indeed anything significant about Five's voice. "Yeah, I mean...it's a little hoarse. Sounds like he's got a frog in his throat."

"Klaus," Ben says, in exactly the way that lets Klaus know Ben thinks he's being an idiot without actually having to say it. His next words send a chill down Klaus' spine. "He sounds like he's been screaming."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I firmly believe the reason Five and Vanya only have a couple scenes together the entire season is because the writers had no choice but to keep them separated. The two of them together would be unstoppable and they would have made the apocalypse their bitch. 
> 
> Chapter title taken from Tom Waits "On the Nickle"


	5. Misery's the River of the World (Everybody Row)

"Jesus Christ," Klaus mutters, shaking his head as he trudged toward the kitchen again and thinking - not for the first time - that he is way too sober for all this. 

"We need to tell the others," Ben says, and Klaus loves his dead brother but sometimes Ben's white knight sincerity really grates on his nerves. 

"Why? So they can freak out about it as much as I am? What good will that do?" He grimaces, a pain that has nothing to do with any physical ailment dragging it's way through his stomach. 

"They deserve to know what's happened," Ben insists and Klaus considers making him corporeal just so he can punch him. 

"Well that's the problem isn't it? We don't _know_ what happened, and laying that on everyone- Jesus. I mean, whatever it was we can't exactly do anything about it can we? And Five doesn't remember anything so what's the point? Maybe he's just tired, or sick."

"We can't ignore this, Klaus."

"I'm not! I just- don't know what you expect me or anyone else to do." He tears his hands through his hair. Jesus- _fuck_! Why did Ben think _his_ shoulders were the best to carry this particular weight? Then again, he was the only one who could see or hear Ben without a sincere effort on Klaus' part so who else could he tell? But the thought that not only had Five been missing an indeterminate length of time _("...a few days here could be weeks, months, even years for them")_ but that - Christ - that he might have been _tortured_ ...it makes Klaus physically ill, mind shying away from the word as his stomach roils like thunderheads, lightning shocks of anxiety running all through him and the whole thing feels entirely too reminiscent of withdrawal sickness for his liking. 

"I need to sit down," he says weakly but doesn't. Instead he goes to the kitchen and makes his brother a fucking sandwich, taking his ill humor out on harmless bread slices and little white marshmallows, brandishing the butter knife like a weapon as he bangs around with unnecessary force. Memories like bloated corpses bob to the surface of his mind; tape over his mouth and masked assailants and a dingy hotel room that smelled like ass sweat and stale cigarettes...

He'd only been at the mercy of Commission goons for about a day and that was more than enough. Enough to be able to imagine the kinds of things that might make Five scream like that...

Except there hadn't been a mark on him. (It should be an encouraging thought but it isn't, bringing to mind all sorts of eclectic horrors; electro-shock therapy and sleep deprivation and Chinese water torture.)

He drops the knife, his hands clumsy.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Ben says, which only pisses him off even more. 

"Oh well, great. I don't know what part of that you thought _wouldn't_ upset me," he growls, smearing peanut butter onto the bread with extreme prejudice. Ben watches him a moment then makes himself scarce with an apologetic flicker which is just as well. Klaus would really like to be alone for awhile.

But family first, right? He folds up his inner turmoil into a nice little square and packs it away with every other fucked-up thing in his life he's never going to tell anyone and he's had years of practice hiding such revelations from his siblings so it's not as hard as it probably should be. He marches back to the medical ward, plate in hand and presents it with a bow and a flourish, tail feathers on full display. That was the trick, really. Klaus learned long ago that being ostentatious was often a better way of hiding his feelings than being quiet and unassuming. Once people got used to the surface flamboyance they rarely looked any deeper.

Five grabs the plate and it's disconcerting to watch him eat like he's never tasted food before, the sandwich disappearing with alarming celerity. What, had they starved him too?

Klaus feels his facade start to crack and bites his tongue until he tastes blood, tearing his eyes away because he can't look at Five right now, not with Ben's words ringing in his ears, making him study his brother like a bug under glass, trying to see whatever it was Ben had seen. Trying to see the damage. Everything starts to blur and he casts about for something else to stare at only to find Allison watching him, a question in her eyes that he doesn't plan on answering.

He considers telling them what Ben has said and can't see the benefit in it. All it would do is upset everyone and they're all upset enough as it is. It might not even be true; it's not as though Ben gained omniscience in death. Without facts it was all just a lot of conjecture.

So why the hell is it bothering him so much? _Because you know a fraction of what they're capable of_ says a voice in his head that sounds annoyingly like Ben even though he isn't there. _And whether you want to admit it or not, you'd be more surprised to find out it didn't happen._

"Want another sandwich?" he asks because he wouldn't mind an excuse to make himself scarce. 

Five shakes his head and leans back against the pillow, his eyes closed. Klaus snatches up the plate and retreats, something like an itch burrowing it's way under his skin, making him shudder.

_He sounds like he's been screaming_

"Fuck," he mutters again for emphasis, leaning against the wall and letting it take his weight. 

Sometimes Ben could be a real asshole.

  
  
***  
  


Allison finds him a bit later ostensibly to tell him Five's asleep again and that Diego's keeping watch while Luther and Vanya both got some much needed rest. (Because even if Luther was the most vocal about it, truth is no one's ready to trust Five just yet. Apparently not even Five.)

In reality he knows she's there to ask him questions he isn't going to answer.

"Klaus-" she starts but he holds up a forestalling hand, "Goodbye" scrawled across the palm and it should be message enough but the Hargreeves clan could be an obtuse bunch when they were willfully missing the point, Allison included. 

Him too, for that matter.

"I _really_ don't want to talk right now." He's not in the right state of mind to laugh and quip and pass it all off as a great cosmic joke. He's fucking _shook,_ however hypothetical Ben's words might have been and he can't stop thinking about that fucking hotel room. 

"Are you okay?" she asks gently, and he has to admit it's a hell of an opening gambit. When was the last time anyone had asked him if he was okay? He was Klaus; he was never okay and conversely that meant he was always okay. "Shit" was supposed to be his personal status quo and no one was expected to to expect anything different.

He gives a shivery laugh in lieu of an answer, a thin sliver of hysteria along the edge. 

"You know when we all agreed we'd start talking to each other more, you were included in that." She takes a couple steps forward, planting herself in front of him, her eyes full of concern.

"I'm just...processing some stuff," he mumbles, turning away. He didn't have much defense against kindness. He couldn't lash out like Five or Diego. Couldn't ignore it like Luther. Couldn't deflect it like Allison. 

A gentle hand on his shoulder like kryptonite. "Is it Five? 'Cause he's going to be okay."

Klaus closes his eyes and swallows. "Yeah, it's Five," he says, because it _was_ Five, mostly. It was Five too exhausted to eat another sandwich despite obviously starving ~~because he'd been tortured~~ and it was Five missing for who knows how long and coming back with his voice in tatters ~~from screaming~~ and it was a hotel room with cheap plastic furniture and cigarette burns on the carpet and I see dead people. It was the very real possibility of ending up one of them and realizing he actually didn't want to die like that, not like that, not being tortured to death and it was Diego's girlfriend cop who actually gave a shit and tried to help him and then he ran away and left her to die instead. It was Dave and 'Nam and coming back the morning after he left ten months later and knowing no one would understand he'd lived forever in a day and _what the hell had happened to Five?_

He's been to enough court-mandated therapy sessions to understand triggers and how they work; he knows what's happening to him. That doesn't really make it any easier to deal with. 

"I think I just- need to be alone for a bit," he says, voice twisted and gnarled like an old tree stump.

"Okay," she says softly, then she hugs him and he just about crumbles. He waits until he can't hear the sound of high heels anymore before he starts to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter ended up being about Klaus but that's okay; our favorite necromancer has a lot of stuff to deal with.


	6. Need a Fix 'Cause I'm Going Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contrary to what the chapter title might imply, this is not actually about Klaus.

**time and date unknown**

  
  


Dark. 

Dark like the world before Prometheus brought down fire; impenetrable and absolute. Dark like the nights after that fire had burned everything to smoke and ruin and the ash choked out the stars.

Dark and cold like the grave, like an oblivion wormhole, that nothing space between two points. Dark like the void that tried to claim him whenever he jumped. 

_Beep_  
_beep_  
_beep_

Couldn't move, couldn't feel his body; limbs dissolved into nothingness. Was he dead then? Perhaps the universe had finally succeeded in killing it's abomination. 

Perhaps it was finally time to call a truce. He could use a long sleep...

At least there was no pain here, not really. He's weightless, less than zero and if nothing else there was an ephemeral sort of peace. Maybe dead wasn't so bad; there were worse things than drifting supernatant through the void.

It was difficult to focus with no body to ground him and so he didn't bother, letting his awareness drift, alluvial clusters of random memory passing him by like scenery. Clandestine visits to Griddy's doughnut shop as a boy with his siblings. Specialized training days with his father when he was pushed to his physical limit until he lay shaking on the floor. Sneaking into to Vanya's room afterwards where they would spend a quiet evening together. The day a wall fell on him while he was scavenging for food. The first person he killed for the Commission. The last time he ate a meal with his family. So many things he'd forgotten in the torturous months after stopping the apocalypse...

_Beep_  
_beep_  
_beep_

_"Vital signs stable."_

The voice rose up from the all-encompassing darkness. Deep, masculine and he had the peculiar feeling it was somewhere nearby. He tried to speak but of course with no mouth words were an impossible thing. 

Perhaps it was God; not that he'd ever been much of a believer. Five had slightly less use for religion than he had for a second sphincter. His mother was a robot, his father was a sadist, the universe itself rejected him and as far as he was concerned if there ever had been a God he could go fuck himself. (He had occasionally discussed theology with Dolores in the blasted wasteland of the apocalypse. She'd held the stanch view that any God as existed simply _must_ be male as it would be impossible for a woman to fuck things up so badly. It didn't matter to Five either way so he always humored her. It was a difficult point to refute in any case.)

_Beep_  
_beep_  
_beep_

_"Preparing to make incision."_

He knew those words should mean something to him but they didn't, and he had a hard time caring anyway. What was there to care about in this place? His thoughts wandered again, pulled along a lazy current of memory and he found himself somewhere in early childhood, a boy of maybe seven or eight. Luther had found a stray dog sniffing about the academy and wanted to keep it. Five warned him not to tell their father, but Luther had never been any good at keeping secrets and he ended up asking the old man for permission to feed it.

They never saw the dog again.

_Beep_  
_beep_  
_beep_

_"Preparing injection in three, two, one..."_

That was a curious thing to sa- 

The universe exploded.

The memories caught fire, bursting into licking flames and the void was no longer black and empty but lit up white and full of pain. His mind crystallized into a thousand glass fibers that all shattered at once, scattering like shrapnel as they embedded themselves into whatever was left of his awareness.

He started screaming...

  
  
***  
  


**9:03am, Tuesday September 3rd, 2019**

  
  
"Jesus!" Diego leaps from the chair with a swear on his lips, adrenaline already pumping as Five starts thrashing on the narrow bed, IV line ripping free and sending a thin spray of blood through the air. His shredded voice makes screaming almost impossible but he tries anyway, and it's one of the more painful sounds Diego's heard in awhile.

He hits the call button and tries to get his hands around Five, to press him back in the bed before he injures himself further but it's like trying to hold onto a hurricane. "Five! C'mon man, stop it-" he pushes him against the thin mattress, arms extended full. Five's eyes are open but Diego doesn't think he has any idea where he is. There's no recognition in those eyes, only terror.

"Five!" he shouts again, trying to get through, to make contact and drag his brother back from wherever he's gone. 

  
  
*** 

More pain, more voices, frantic, gibbering and alarmed. Five doesn't care about any of them, he just wants the pain to stop.

 _"What the hell!?"_  
_"-ow is he conscious?_  
_"Hold him down!"_  
_"-administer the anesthesia?"_  
_"I did!"_  
_"-ve to stop surgery-"_  
_"We can't, he's already been injec-"_  
_"Shit! Grab his arm!"_  
_"Fuck, he's loose! Look ou-"_  
_**"Five!"**_  
  
  
***  


Diego manages to pin one of Five's wildly flailing arms against his chest and it's harder than it should be, panic giving his brother more strength than his small body had a right to. 

"Five!" Diego pants, throwing nearly his entire weight across Five's body. He doesn't know what else to do but try to stop him from throwing himself off the bed, and to keep saying his name over and over, as many times as it took. He thinks he can hear his siblings footsteps thundering down the hall towards the surgery.

With his free hand Five reaches out, grabs the back of Diego's shirt and flings him across the room.

He doesn't even have time to process what's happening before his body hits the far wall and everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title taken from the Beatles' "Happiness is a warm gun"
> 
> I'm a whore for comments so thoughts, insights, conspiracy theories and constructive criticism always welcome.


	7. If We Weren't All Crazy We Would Go Insane

**9:21am, Tuesday September 3rd, 2019**

"Ow-fuck..."

Between vigilante crime fighting, boxing and good old fashioned sibling rivalry, Diego's had his fair share of head injuries so he knows what it means when he comes to with a pain in his head like drill bit boring a path to his brain and no real memory of how he got it.

"Easy," that was Luther. Great. (Not that he held the kind of animosity for Luther that he used to, but Spaceboy still wasn't his favorite sibling, and definitely not the one he'd want to find him out cold on the floor. That shit was just embarrassing.)

"Wh- what happened?" His hand goes to his head and the tender lump swelling at the back. He feels like he's been thrown through a glass window and had a long fall to the bottom.

"We were hoping you could tell us," Luther says, steadying Diego as the world lists hart to port. "You hit the call button in the surgery. When we got here you were both on the floor."

"I-" he blinks, trying to recall the last few minutes of consciousness. "Yeah. Five had some kind of - I don't know - nightmare I guess. Started thrashing around. I was having a hard time keeping him in bed."

"He ripped his IV free," Luther says and Diego nods.

"Yeah he did." He'd forgotten that part.

"So how did you end up on the other side of the room with a concussion?" 

Diego tries to separate it all in his head but it's not easy, thoughts sliding around like billiard balls. Still, it wasn't his first time thinking through head trauma. He's not sure what it says about his life that he's kinda used to that by now, but it probably isn't anything good. "This is gonna sound completely crazy but, I think he threw me." 

The most surprising thing is how unsurprised Luther seems, like he was just waiting for confirmation of something he already knew. He doesn't look at Diego as he speaks. "When we got here he was still...agitated. I had to- when he was losing his memories I had to restrain him a lot, you know, when he got violent. The only hard part was doing it without hurting him. This time though, I was barely able to hold onto him."

The various implications of that sink like whale fall straight to the bottom of Diego's stomach as the pain in his head batters to a surf. "What the hell did they _do_ to him?" he mutters to himself.

Luther just shakes his head helplessly. "I don't know."

Diego tries to stand without embarrassing himself and it doesn't go too well, the ground still shaky and his balance uncertain. Luther locks a giant hand around his wrist and puts him on his feet, holding onto his shoulder until the walls stop spinning pirouettes.

Five's in bed once more, apparently asleep again (or sedated). Luther follows his gaze and seems to know what he's thinking. "Just sleeping," he clarifies. "He calmed down after a few minutes."

It was something, at least. Sad fucking commentary when Five being able to sleep without heavy sedation was a cause for cheer, but things were as they were; there was no point in pretending otherwise. "Did he say anything?"

"Nothing that made much sense," Luther says, and yeah, that sounded just about right. Of course he wouldn't say anything useful. Anything _helpful._ Anything that might help them begin to untangle this mess. Diego closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"I need some aspirin," he complains, and to his surprise Luther pulls out a bottle of small white pills from his coat pocket and hands them over wordlessly. "Thanks," he says, still too muddy-headed and discombobulated to think of anything else.

"Your welcome."

Diego palms a couple and takes them dry. "You on watch?" he asks, which is a dumb question but he had head trauma, so. 

"Yeah," Luther says, sounding tired but then again Luther's been on guard pretty much since Five returned, save for the few hours of sleep he'd gotten and well...look how that turned out. "You should get some ice or something," he adds and it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion so of course Diego finds fault with it. 

"You could have bought me some." 

Luther doesn't react to that beyond a apathetic twitch of his shoulder and Diego finds there isn't much sport in pushing Luther's buttons if he isn't getting a reaction...or rather when the reaction he _is_ getting reminds him of an old dog too beat down and tired to care whether or not someone's poking at it.

It's an unsettling enough metaphor Diego decides he'll probably go ahead and get that ice himself after all. "You want anything?" he asks in lieu of an apology as he heads to the door. 

"No."

Diego looks back just in time to see Luther drop his head into his hands. 

He kinda wishes he hadn't.

  
  
***  


He winces as he presses the compress to his head, a spear of ice helping chase away the pain. He isn't sure where the others are and right now doesn't really care; he hates appearing weak and mortal in front of them. It's probably some kind of character flaw but whatever; they all had their issues. 

Normally it would be mom helping him do this. 

There's another lump, this time in his throat and he grinds the heel of his hand into his eyes until they stop stinging. He'd lost her again, and this time there would be no coming back; the damage had been far too extensive even for Pogo to repair. She was just another hunk of metal scrap and wires.

 _She was never just scrap and wires_ he admonishes himself. She was his mom; it had never mattered to him that she wasn't flesh and blood. The unwavering, unconditional love and loyalty she offered had often been the only thing in his childhood that had made any damn _sense_. As an adult he'd looked for that same kind of love elsewhere and hadn't found it, realizing only too late that was because people weren't robots. That people were messy and complicated and they expected a return on investment that was usually more than he could give, because he was messy too. (He was at least self-aware enough to understand that wasn't really their fault.)

Most love was conditional; Grace's hadn't been. (He'd never admit it to anyone and especially not Five, but he understood his brother's attachment to Dolores. It was the reason he'd told Luther to bring her along when they'd found him drunk at the library all those months ago and the reason he'd talked Klaus into helping him steal her back from Gimbel's after Five got sick.)

He wonders how many more people he's going to lose before this whole thing has run it's course. Wonders if Five is going to be one of them. Most of all, he wonders if he's got the strength to go through it again. 

Right now it doesn't feel like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Diego...yeah. 
> 
> Chapter title from 'Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes' by Jimmy Buffett


	8. Shadows Smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delayed update; rl has thrown me a couple curve balls this week.

**4:47pm, Tuesday September 3rd, 2019**

There's nothing alarming or noteworthy on Five's return to consciousness. He simply wakes up, and if there were nightmares he doesn't remember them. Whatever dreams follow him to the surface quickly sink down again into the vast tenebrous cavern of his subconscious and he's left in a hazy state of numb half awareness, pleasantly adrift. The world has a crepuscular, dreamlike quality that bespoke sedatives of one kind or another and he wonders at the implications, but can't find the energy to be overly concerned. No doubt he'll get the full story sooner or later.

He's still in the surgery, still in bed and Luther is still on guard, barricaded in front of the door, huge body sunk into an old recliner recently scrounged from somewhere in the mansion. Luther's eyes are closed, a decades old copy of National Geographic open on his chest, a gaggle of cranes on the cover with their long white necks stretched like exclamation points towards the sky. 

Thankfully, Dolores is there too.

She smiles at him, _Welcome back_ and he can't deny that he's missed her terribly. She'd been his rock for so long that he'd felt anchorless without her; a tiny boat on wide and dangerous seas. It had felt like drowning. _You should have told me,_ she says, delicate mouth cast down in a slight admonishment and he lowers his gaze. 

"I didn't want to hurt you," he says quietly, but Dolores has always been too clever for that. 

_You didn't want me to stop you._

"That too," he admits. His throat still feels raw and he casts about for some water; there's a bottle by the bed along with a sandwich cut into triangles and he manages a small smile. Vanya. She's the only one who knew his preference for triangled sandwiches. He takes a sip of water and is about to speak again but Luther snores, catching his attention. 

_Let him sleep,_ Dolores says, _I think I want you to myself for awhile._

That sounds reasonable and Five nods. Luther looks like he hasn't been getting much sleep anyway.

"I've missed you," he says softly and she arches a delicate eyebrow at him _who's fault is that?_ but she's giving him that coy smile and he knows he's forgiven. If not now, soon.

Dolores has always forgiven him, even when he didn't deserve it. Even when he couldn't forgive himself. 

_Don't think about any of that right now,_ she says soothingly, plucking the thoughts from his head. _You did what you had to do, just like always._

"Just like always," he parrots as Luther shifts, magazine sliding to the floor. Dolores regards him idly, a delicate hum in the back of her throat. It wasn't accurate to say Dolores never judged him. Quite the opposite in fact; she judged him all the time for pretty much everything, and more often than not found him lacking. But she never let it come between them, either. She's always been there; even to the end of the world. 

And beyond.

_He doesn't trust you, you know,_ she observes a bit sadly, glancing at Luther and yes, Five knows that quite well. He's always been able to read Luther like a book. His brother is big and strong and entirely too honest, too naive for this world even after everything that's happened to him and his face broadcasts emotions like the morning news. Five knows exactly what Luther thinks of him. He can't really fault him for it. 

"I don't trust myself," he admits, and tries to find a way to explain it. 

_You feel different,_ Dolores says, and he's reminded once again why he's missed her; she knows him so well and chooses to be with him anyway. Even now, when she didn't have to be. 

"I don't understand it yet." His eyes lose focus as his attention drifts. He _does_ feel different, he doesn't know why. He needs to be alone for awhile, needs time to organize his thoughts, to focus and reflect. He remembers plenty, but he doesn't _know_ anything. "They said the Commission took me. That means-" it could mean a lot of things, certainly none of them good. He tries to recall the specific moment he was taken but it's gone; just like the four days (or longer) he supposedly spent at their mercy. "I can't _remember!"_ he growls in sudden frustration and Dolores says _shhh_ just as Luther wakes. 

"Five?" Luther asks, looking rumpled and confused.

"Hey," Five croaks, drudging up a half-hearted smile. 

"Who're you talking to?" he asks, and Five feels a spark of irritation because it's not like Dolores isn't _right there_. 

"It doesn't matter," he says, which isn't what he meant to say but he glances at Dolores and she seems content so he lets it stand.

Luther looks doubtful but doesn't press. He does a lot less pressing these days, his brush with the apocalypse having humbled him to the point he was actually tolerable to be around. "Okay. Are you- do you need anything?"

"No, I'm fine," he lies, because what he needs Luther can't get for him. 

"Okay...I'll let the others know you're awake." Luther's acting odd. Over cautious, uncertain. He's fidgeting, a childhood habit he'd apparently never been able to break. Five glances around but there's no one else there, no threats that he can perceive. 

"What's the matter?"

"You uh, you had a nightmare," Luther explains, but Five has the feeling he'd hedging. 

"So?" Nightmares weren't unusual for any of them. Klaus had nightmares about the dead. Allison had nightmares about getting her throat slit, and Five's pretty sure Luther had nightmares about the moon. They were all damaged in their own ways, and none of them were strangers to sleepless nights.

"It's just..." Luther flounders around like a banked fish, mouth working and it's starting to get on Five's nerves. He wants to snap at Luther, tell him to stand up straight and spit it out. He's supposed to be the 'leader' after all.

_He was never the leader,_ Dolores observes, and she's right but now isn't the time to bring it up.

"You hurt Diego."

Oh. 

Five blinks, looking down. "I'm sorry," he says, and then, "I don't remember."

"I didn't think you would," Luther says more gently than Five has a right to. "You were pretty out of it."

There's a strange feeling in Five's stomach, something twisting it's way through his guts and he tries not to think about it. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah," Luther tries to smile but it comes out wrong, shriveled up like a dying flower. "He's probably done worse to himself in the boxing ring." 

Five doesn't believe him. Luther's too easy to read. Too damn easy. 

_I wonder what he's hiding,_ Dolores asks lazily, seeming disinterested, and Five mutters for her to be quiet. He needs to _think._ He clenches his teeth together. "Can you get me some coffee?" he asks Luther and it's an excuse, even though he does want coffee. Luther nods, happy to have a task. Luther was always happy to have a task, always measuring his worth in accordance to how useful he felt, how helpful he was being (how helpful he _thought_ he was being). It's a character trait their father had exploited to it's limit.

Luther moves the chair from in front of the door and starts to slip out. 

_I wonder what he would look like with his guts in his lap,_ Dolores murmurs and Five says "What?"

"What?" Luther asks, pausing, confusion making his face ripple like water and Five says, "Nothing, never mind," but he has a hard time making the words come; it feels like someone's stolen all the air in the room. Luther's not leaving like Five needs him too, still hovering about so Five fixes a smile on his face, hammering it out until it's more or less the right shape and meets Luther's eyes. "I'm fine."

Luther leaves after a last doubtful, questioning glance and Five stares into space, worrying his lip between his teeth. Yes, he is fine. Completely fine. But he has the uneasy feeling something is terribly wrong with Dolores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *coughs*


	9. Choking on the Splinters of Us

**12:55pm, Friday September 6th, 2019**

Allison watches as he wanders into the kitchen and over to the coffee pot like he's still asleep, like he's never slept at all, hair askew and hands moving on autopilot. There's a smear of chalk dust on his shirt and all she can think is, _Here we go again_. He takes a perfunctory sip of coffee, grimacing at the taste and that at least is normal; Five was forever complaining at their lack of coffee making skills. She's not sure anyone who grew up in a literal wasteland had any reason to judge, but if it wasn't the coffee it probably would have been something else. 

She secretly thinks Five just likes having something to bitch about, to remind them all he was older than he looked. Old enough to appreciate strong coffee. Old enough to know a good brew from a bad one. She's not even sure he actually _likes_ coffee or if he drinks it simply to make a point.

She's also not sure he knows what day of the week it is. Or rather, she's not sure he cares.

"Hi," she says, because he hasn't so much as glanced at her since coming in.

He looks up, looks past her, a thousand miles away and fatally distracted. She clears her throat and he focuses on her at last, blinking. "Hi," he says, then mutters something under his breath she can't quite hear. 

"What?" she asks, leaning forward to catch the words. 

He gives her a vague sort of look, "Hmmm?" and she decides not to press.

"Are you coming with us to Vanya's concert tomorrow?" she asks, artfully changing the subject.

"Of course," he says instantly, words scrubbed clean of inflection and she has no idea if he means it or not. Since waking up a few days ago he's been increasingly closed-off, and it's become increasingly difficult to hold his attention. It's worryingly similar to the way he acted in the weeks after coming back from the past, before they realized how sick he was, except there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his memory. He'll still look at them and talk to them and answer their questions. He knows who he is, who they are, where he's at and what's going on (as much as any of them know what's going on). He doesn't act confused, simply...distracted. To Allison at least it's like he's listening to a voice only he can hear. 

"Are you feeling okay?" she asks, because last time no one had asked that question until it was too late.

"Of course," comes the automatic response, predictable as a metronome and doing nothing to abate her concern. She hadn't really expected him to say anything else.

"You just...seem like you're struggling," she says, trying to be politic, to connect, looking for the man hidden behind the boyish face and the half-lidded eyes.

His eyes flicker to the side, head turning a fraction and he frowns. She doesn't get the chance to ask him about it before it's gone and he looks back at her with an easy, prefabricated smile she doesn't buy for a moment. He takes a sip of coffee, studying her over the rim. For no reason at all a shiver runs down her spine. "I'm all right," he says, and she thinks that's going to be the end of it but surprisingly he keeps going. "Things have just been...a little rough. I mean, I'm still trying to piece everything together. I was kind of out of it for awhile."

She wants to believe that's all it is. She wants to be relieved he's back, but she's not sure he is. "We're here to help you with that, you know," 

"It's not really something I want to talk about," he replies carefully, which was also typical. Five almost never talked about himself. Not about the apocalypse or the Commission or anything that followed. She supposes she can't really blame him, but she wishes he would anyway. She wishes she _knew_ him. It would make it a lot easier to know if something was actually wrong with him or not. If the week of the apocalypse was a behavioral anomaly spurred by his lunatic quest and he really was just...like this. 

He smiles at her again and shuffles out, humming a broken tune and nearly running into Klaus. Klaus pauses and watches him leave, quizzical expression on his face. He sits down and helps himself to some of her sushi, popping a bit of salmon into his mouth. "Is it just me or has Five been acting kind of...weird, since he got back?"

"You mean weirder than usual?" she sighs. "No, it's not just you."

"You know I wish I could say that's a relief but it's not."

"To be fair, we don't really know what's normal for him, do we?" He'd only been back a week before Vanya and their disastrous (albeit successful) trip to the past and everything that followed. One week to reconnect over a chasm that spanned seventeen years for them and a lifetime for him and honestly they'd all been too wrapped up in themselves to bother. Allison herself had only seen Five a handful of times that week and he was mostly telling her to fuck off and leave him be, so she had. The only one who'd pushed him for answers had been Luther (and his success was probably only due to the fact Five had been too hung over at the time to fight him about it). The rest of them had been content to let Five do whatever. Of course if they had gotten involved he probably would have just resented them for it, but the fact of the matter is he was their brother, and they hadn't even tried. 

Then again, they also hadn't bothered to notice Klaus had gone missing right after the Academy had been broken into. God, they were shit at being a family.

"I know what normal isn't," Klaus is saying as he snatches another bite of her lunch, "It isn't talking to yourself all the time and barricading yourself in your bedroom and writing on the walls."

"Vanya says he wrote on walls during the apocalypse. Apparently paper was in short supply." She shrugs, "I guess it's a habit he never bothered to kick."

Klaus is quiet for a bit, toying with the salt shaker and she thinks he might be ready to tell her what's really bothering him. "Ben thinks the Commission did something to him," he says softly. He looks up, eyes pleading with her to tell him she thinks Ben is wrong, and that Five is fine, and that everything's going to be okay.

But Allison doesn't tell lies anymore, even if she wishes she could. For his sake, she wishes she could.

"It would explain what happened to Diego."

His face crumbles and she feels like it's taking her with it. "What do you think they did?"

"I don't know, but-" It isn't anything specific, nothing she can put her finger on. Mostly, it's just a feeling. The same kind she used to get around dangerous fans. The same kind she'd gotten around Harold Jenkins. A feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her things weren't as they seemed, that something's wrong. She's learned to trust that feeling. She doesn't say any of that. "He doesn't seem to remember anything."

"And you believe him?" it comes out more hopeful than accusatory. Klaus is looking for a reason to keep the faith.

But Allison doesn't lie anymore. "I don't know."

  
  
***

Outside the kitchen Five stands with an ear cocked toward the doorway, listening. 

_I told you they're all talking about you,_ Dolores says.

"They always talk about me," he replies as he slips away, having heard enough.

_Yes, sometimes I wonder why you put up with it. After everything you've done for them, they still don't trust you._

"I don't really trust myself right now," he admits, slowly chewing his lip to pieces. There's a headache gathering behind his eyes, making it hard to focus.

I _trust you._

"I know," he says, grateful for her support. He sighs, "It's fine; they just like to worry about me. They think I'm still a kid."

_Yes, I'm sure that's all it is,_ she says archly. 

He pauses, turning towards her. "What is that supposed to mean?"

_You know what it means._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buckle up. It's about to get wild.
> 
> edit: this would work a lot better if I'd stop accidentally uploading chapters before they're finished...


	10. Dropping Pennies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Five's psychosis is not meant to reflect or be characteristic of any real-world mental illness. Both its origin and symptoms are fictional.

**5:46pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

_You can't avoid them forever,_ Dolores says, watching with calm serenity as Five furiously scribbles code into a notebook. He's trying to remember the dream he had, the one that woke him up shaking in a cold sweat. He needs to write it down before he forgets.

Forgetting things had arrowed it way to the top of the short list of things that terrify him, overtaking even the fear of a second apocalypse.

"I'm not trying to avoid them forever," he replies, not looking up. "Just until I understand what's going on." Just until he had something to _tell_ them, for Christ's sake. He's been trying to piece together the fragmented timeline of his illness, track it's progression from start to finish, find the gaps in his memories and analyze them. He's not sure what it will accomplish but he'll rest better once he's got it straight in his head and maybe, just maybe he'll remember something significant. If he can remember what happened everyone else might finally leave him alone about it. 

He's spent most of the last day in his room. It's not that he doesn't want to see them, but every time he does all they want to do is ask him things. Even when they don't, when they make a concerted effort not to, the questions hover like malcontent ghosts in the air between them; his whole life is haunted by them. How is he feeling? (Fine.) Does he want to talk? (No.) Has he remembered anything new? (Not yet.) Is he crazy? ( _Is_ he crazy?) And oh by the way, does he remember throwing his brother across the room? (He doesn't, just as he doesn't remember what the Commission had wanted.) He's told them all this before but he doesn't think they believe him (as if he had any reason to be loyal to the _Commission_ of all places). Right now they're either tiptoeing around him (Vanya, Allison), pressing him for answers he doesn't have (Luther, Klaus) or avoiding him altogether (Diego).

Dolores is his only ally. Just like old times.

 _I'll always be here for you,_ she says, _hopefully._

Five looks up at last, something cold snaking it's way through his stomach. "What's that supposed to mean?"

_I don't think Luther likes me very much._

He frowns. "Why do you say that?"

 _He threw me out a window,_ she reminds him.

Well, that's fair. "I don't think he realized you were real," Five says, coming to Luther's defense. His brother's an idiot but he wasn't malicious or cruel; he wouldn't have threatened Dolores if he'd known.

 _Am I real?_ she asks and his frown deepens, becomes a scar across his face. It's been a long time since she's asked him that. He gives her the same answer as last time. 

"You're real to me." But last time she'd asked him he was the only person alive in the world, and his opinion the only one that mattered. Reality had been as he defined it and there was no one left to argue the point. She had been as real as anything else in that hellish place, because he had declared her so.

 _Things are different now_ she says sadly, and he puts the notebook down, going to her and taking her in his arms, because he couldn't bear it when she was sad. 

"Please don't cry," he says softly. "You're real; of course you're real." His own pain he could deal with handily; he's had a lifetime of practice ignoring it. 

He's never been able to ignore hers. 

He's about to make her promises when there's a knock on his door. "Five?" Vanya. Vanya was the other person in his life he couldn't bear hurting so gives Dolores a gentle kiss, puts her down and goes to the door. 

"We'll talk some more later," he tells her, "I promise." He opens the door.

"Hi," she says and he's instantly suspicious. There's a forced casualness about her demeanor that has him on guard. Behind him Dolores says, _Be careful_

"We're having a family meeting," she says, "It's important that you're there. And...I'd like you to come."

"What's it about?" he asks, but he already knows. Of course he knows; he isn't stupid.

"You," is the predictable answer, and he at least gives her credit for a lack of chicanery. She could have lied, or tried to trick him downstairs. He's grateful she didn't because that means he doesn't have to resent her for it.

"What about me?"

She takes a deep breath. "We're worried about you. And I think we all need to talk, as a family." She can tell he's going to say no, so she fires her last salvo. "Please?"

He sighs, "Vanya-" 

"Please? For me?" He closes his eyes but nods. For her. Truth be told there wasn't much he _wouldn't_ do for Vanya, but he'd rather that not become general knowledge. In his world such affection was a liability for them both.

Vanya smiles in relief and he wishes she wouldn't.

 _This isn't going to end well_ Dolores tells him, and he has a sinking feeling she's right; she usually was and anyway, he doesn't see how it could be otherwise. He follows Vanya downstairs regardless because it's not like that's ever stopped him before. Bad decisions are stacked behind him like days; his hands drip red with regrets. Why stop now?  
  
***

If the intervention/interrogation is (as Dolores predicted) an unmitigated disaster then at least it's one he'd anticipated. After all it was only a matter of time that, being unsuccessful approaching him individually, they inevitably try a coordinated attack. 

That his siblings coordinated efforts at doing anything were rarely successful is a detail they seem to have overlooked.

He glances around at them and doesn't bother feigning ignorance. "Well, let's get this over with."

"We're just trying to help you," Luther says, and the words get under his skin, making him itch. 

Five arms himself with nothing but honesty, and if his siblings had half a brain between them it would be enough. "You can't," he tells them, because it's true. 

"You don't know that," Allison says, and Five fixes her with a flat stare that curdles around the edges. 

"Yes I do. Whatever the Commission wants they are going to try and get by any means possible and if you get in their way, then whatever happened to me is going to happen to you, _if_ you're lucky." He scoffs at their faces; resolute, unyielding. _Fucking stupid_. They're going to get themselves killed. "I shouldn't even be here."

"Then why are you here?" Diego asks, and it's the most he's said to Five in the last two days. "We couldn't keep you here if we tried, so why are you staying?"

Diego doesn't know it because Diego doesn't know anything, but Five's been asking himself that same question ever since he woke up. It's more than the promise he made to Vanya. He feels compelled somehow, a bullet fired from a gun on a trajectory he can neither predict nor alter. He's tried to leave; he always comes back. He can't help it. The most he can do is this; lock himself away, write it all down. Try to understand what's happening to him before...before.

Before what? He closes his eyes. He feels wrong; everything about this body feels wrong and he's used to that, he is. He doesn't belong in this skin, not for many, many years and hardly a day goes by that he doesn't wish he could peel it off, shed it like serpent's scale and find one that fit him better.

But it's been different these last few days, the feeling of wrongness even more pronounced. They did something to him...

"..in case they come back," Allison is saying, and he has no idea how much time he's missed. He frowns; it wasn't like him to remove himself so completely from a conversation that he can't recall it. Oh he often _acted_ like he wasn't listening, but he was. He always did. "We're just trying to figure out how best to help you."

"I don't-" he stops mid sentence, an odd throbbing sensation at the base of his skull. "I don't need help," he says again, eternally. Round and round they go, the six of them like planets in orbit around each other, circling a dark star. 

"Yes you do," Luther counters, voice firm and irrevocable and Five has a feeling something more is being said, some deeper intention behind the words.

_They want to send you to a doctor,_ Dolores says, and he startles because he hadn't realized she was here. _They want to send you away. Do you remember what happened last time you saw a doctor, Five?_

"No."

_Yes you do; you pretend not to have nightmares about it. Imagine what they'll do to you when they find out you're hearing voices._

"I- I'm not..."

_Isn't that what they'll think? Isn't that what they all think?_

"Five?" Vanya asks and he startles, blinking. "Who are you talking to?"

"N- no one," he says, sparing a guilty glance in Dolores' direction and wondering why she's asking him to lie.

"You feeling okay?" Klaus asks, sharing a secret look with whom Five assumes is Ben.

"OF course," he says, words preprogrammed and automatic, rolling of his tongue like someone stuck a coin in him.

 _Let's not talk about this anymore._ Dolores sounds bored and Five says without thinking, "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Five," Luther says, standing up as though his height would give is words legitimacy, "This is important. _You're_ important to us. We know something's wrong; let us try and help you."

Help him, help him...over and over again, a record skipping on the same tired words. He doesn't want their help. He doesn't need their help. What he really needs is some aspirin and a stiff drink. A symbol clashes in his brain, skull reverberating with the pain of it. "Fuck off Luther; who died and left you in charge?"

And Luther answers calmly, "Dad."

Five laughs at him and Luther bristles like the animal he is. "I'm the leader," he begins, "Dad left me in charge-"

"Dad left you on the moon," Five corrects, and then because he's tired of this pointlessness and his head hurts a good deal anyway he delivers the truth they all know but no one will say. "You're not a 'leader', Luther. You never were. That's why you're so _bad_ at it. You have no idea how to lead. The Umbrella Academy only ever had one leader, and we all called him 'dad'. He's the one that picked the missions, told us where to go, what to do, ran our lives down to the minute. _He_ was the leader, Luther, not you. You were a -a field sergeant. His faithful lieutenant; your job was to keep everyone marching in the same direction. But you never got to decide which direction to march. You took your orders from dad just like the rest of us. And he knew you were so desperate to please, to be needed, that if he told you you were the leader of the academy, you'd fight tooth and nail to keep it together. And you did. You spent your whole life swallowing his bullshit, believing he valued you, thinking you were better than you really were. And then dad died and you had nothing; an empty house and lap full of lies. And even then you were too dumb to realize it; still calling yourself the leader. But you can't lead; you were never taught how. The only thing you were ever taught how to do was follow orders. And when you didn't have any more orders to follow you broke. That's why the apocalypse happened, Luther. It wasn't Vanya; it was you."

The room thrums with tension, taut as piano wire as they all stare at him, open mouthed and shocked but not a single one of them refutes it. Diego comes closest, muttering "Jesus, Five" under his breath. Luther just looks at him and Five can tell he's landed a critical blow; he's an assassin after all. He knows where all the vital points are and how to puncture them. But Luther's a stubborn bastard and still on his feet. Bleeding out perhaps, but not giving up.

Five preferred a clean kill; the slow deaths were always his least favorite.

"Maybe so," Luther says quietly, "But that doesn't mean we're wrong about this."

 _He needed to hear the truth anyway,_ Dolores says and Five shakes his head because..."this isn't' right," he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face.

 _Sometimes I wonder why you don't just burn the whole place to the ground and start over_ she remarks. _You always hated it here._

Another symbol crashes and everyone is staring at him and he's starting to shake...he needs to get out of here. He needs to get away, he needs to get back to the academy and warn them, tell them about...about...

The bathroom. He's in the bathroom on the third floor. He knows logically he must have jumped there but has no memory of doing so. No memory...he stares at himself in the mirror, at the stranger staring back at him. "What's happening to me," he whispers, and there's no answer because Dolores isn't there. For some reason it's a relief.

To be honest he's worried about her; she wasn't acting like herself.

He sighs and shakes his head. Maybe a shower would help. He needed a shower anyway; he hasn't had one since waking up. Hygiene had been far down on the list of concerns in the apocalypse and he'd worked hard to reestablish a personal standard of cleanliness. He couldn't let himself fall back into the bad habits of a wasteland vagabond.

It wasn't healthy.

He starts the water running, turning it to hot because things like hot running water hadn't stopped feeling like a luxury to him yet. He starts peeling out of his clothes, letting them pile carelessly to the floor. He runs his hand over the puckered scar on his stomach, a grim reminder of his last days at the Commiss-

His hand stops. He looks down. 

There is no scar, the skin perfectly smooth and pale, as though it had never happened. He hastily checks his shoulder, that thin line where an assassin's bullet had grazed his arm at Gimbel's. Nothing. There's nothing there; it's as if his body had never known a day of pain or violence. 

And suddenly it makes sense. The odd feeling of disassociation, the strange newness of his limbs. The feeling that he didn't quite 'fit', like a leather shoe before it's broken in.

He looks at the stranger in the mirror. "Shit!"


	11. Run Like Hell

**6:27pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

The realization isn't so much a light bulb as a lightning bolt; half a billion volts of he should have realized sooner. The face in the mirror stares back at him in pale horror; same blue-green eyes, same dark hair, same dimple and same chin. But it isn't _him_. It's something else, some grotesque amalgamation of disparate parts; Frankenstein's creation with its too-strong body and too-fragile mind. He presses a hand against his chest, the heart he's never known beating much, much too fast for lungs to draw air and he feels like he's on a mountain precipice, thousands of feet above the sea where the air is thin and men choke to death on their own blood. 

He wonders who's blood he's going to choke on.

He touches his chest, his arms, his face, fingers scrabbling and desperate, trying to prove to himself that he still exists in the world but the flesh he touches isn't his own. It looks like his; it doesn't feel like it. He's not here...he's not _here._

They've taken his body, stolen it. Stolen _him_ , ripped his consciousness free of it's anchor and sent him back in a meat sack they'd grown in a lab. Being stuck in his thirteen year old body had been bad enough. Being trapped in a thirteen year old body that wasn't even his... 

"Where am I?" he whispers, breath too shallow and too weak as he collapses on his knees. "W-where am I?" The Commission had promised him a new body once; he'd agreed, though he'd never seriously considered the offer. It had been a ruse, a way to infiltrate the home office and mine for answers. To be honest, the thought of an artificial body sickened him, however real the flesh and blood.

He'd agreed. They'd delivered.

He gasps, the room beginning to spin. He's had panic attacks before. They were common enough in the early days, after the Commission plucked him from the ruins of a dead future world and carried him into the past to dole out death on a smaller, more focused scale. The triggers had been other people, usually. Other people and noise, cities full to the bursting point, boiling over with voices and sounds and the smell of millions of bodies all living and dying on top of each other.

It had been almost unbearable, after so many years with no voice but his and Dolores'. No sounds but wind and thunder and crumbling ruins, the shaking rumble of falling bridges, the cacophonic avalanche of collapsing buildings. His lullabies were the shifting wind and shattering infrastructure, he hadn't been prepared for the sounds of a living world. 

Yes, he's had panic attacks before. But not for awhile, and never in _this_ body. This body is new to it all...the lungs seize up, head filling with snow and he has the dangerous thought that he's about to pass out. And God only knew who he'd wake up as...

If there was one thing the apocalypse taught him, it was how to keep moving. He forces the air into his lungs, grabs the counter and claws his way to his feet, mouth a gaping, gasping hole and shoulder braced against the wall to keep himself upright. He feels like an aviator piloting an alien ship; all the controls are foreign.

But somehow he manages. He always manages.

He makes it to his bedroom and it takes him three tries to lock the door, fingers trembling and clumsy and he sinks against it with his head in his hands. Except it wasn't his head, or his hands...

He feels violated, and the implications of that word he refuses to consider but even so they are there, hovering at the edges of his mind. They'd taken everything from him...taken everything... _taken_ him... 

_I told you it wouldn't end well,_ Dolores says from behind him.

"D-Dolores..." his brain feels like an overturned bookcase, thoughts piled up broken-spined on the floor. He doesn't even know what he's trying to say, what he's asking her for, the words barely squeezing their way around the heart in his throat. "The Commission- my-

_Shhhh,_ Dolores soothes, delicate arm outstretched towards him like a plea. _It's all right; I know._

It takes him far longer than it should to understand those few simple words and when he does all he can do is stare at her, his whole body feeling tight, lungs constricting for want of space. "You- you _know!?_

_I know everything about you, darling._

It's too much to process, the gears in his mind slipping loose and rolling across the floor. It feels like reality is shattering around him. One more shock today and he's probably going to go insane. (Maybe he already is.) "Why didn't you tell me!?"

Dolores stares at him with serene indifference. _I was protecting you. Anyway, what difference does it make?_

"Wha- what difference?" It makes all the difference in the world. "This- this isn't my body." Not his body. They _took_ his body. "I'm not real..."

_Silly man, of course you are. You're as real as I am._

Those words unsettle him for reasons he doesn't want to think about. (As if he's not already unsettled enough.) "You-" she hadn't told him. It's the only thought in his head; a logjam he can't find his way around. That she'd known and she hadn't told him...what else did she know? What other secrets was she hiding?

_I know that in a few minutes your family is going to find you, and then we'll have a real problem,_ she says, even though he hadn't spoken out loud. 

He stares at her, eyes turning to daggers. As if he didn't already have real problems. As if finding out the Commission had stolen his very life wasn't a 'real' problem. Then again, Dolores only had half a body herself. Maybe she saw things differently than he did...

She still should have told him.

 _None of that matters right now,_ she says and for once he's having a hard time believing her. _You need to decide what we're going to do about your family._

"What about them?" he still isn't thinking straight. He knows he isn't, and usually in times like this he'd let Dolores take over, follow her council until he felt better and he came back to himself. But he doesn't trust her right now. 

_Five,_ she says sharply. She almost never raises her voice to him, she rarely has to. Only now and then, whenever he starts getting lost inside his head. When the past becomes more real than the present and he starts listening to the voices of a dead world. That happened in the apocalypse sometimes. He would imagine things, dead faces and dead siblings and she would yell until-

 _Five!_ Their eyes meet with a crack and she stares at him disapprovingly.

_You need to focus. They're coming to take you from me. What are you going to about it?_

Take him...yes, that was the problem. They already had. They'd taken him and Dolores hadn't said anything-

_You need to stop them, Five. They're not going to let us be together._

Stop them...stop who? What was she babbling about? He can't think, not like this...he covers his ears, pressing hard but her voice is still murmuring inside his head, saying something about shock and not having any time and that thought makes him laugh - makes him giggle like a child because of all people _he_ should have time for everything. Time and time and time...things start to go dark.

 _Don't you dare!_ Dolores hisses at him, his awareness snapping back on itself like a rubber band, leaving him flinching from the sting. She's glaring at him, truly angry now, angrier than he's ever seen her and the sneer etched across her face makes her ugly. An ugly, bald headed creature with a painted face. _Are you going to stop them or not?_ she demands, and Five glares back at her saying, "No." 

She'd lied to him.

Her face shifts, once delicate features twisting into something monstrous. _You are a great disappointment to me,_ she says, and that isn't Dolores' voice anymore.

"No," he whispers, shaking his head as he stumbles back against the door, staring at her in slowly mounting horror. This wasn't his Dolores...or maybe it was. Had they taken her too, or was he simply insane? Was she real or did he just need her to be so? It feels like his mind is starting to crack. _Stop being weak,_ she spits at him, uncaring. _If you won't do it, maybe I will._

It's the final straw, and the camel's back snaps in two. "No!" Anger floods through him, overwhelming everything. A burning rage that boils away all the pain and horror and confusion of the last few days. It's been there this whole time, simmering like magma under his skin, and now unleashed. There's a commotion out in the hallway, voices, running feet...he pays them no attention, leaping towards her with hands like claws. He isn't going to let anyone hurt his family; not even her. She screams as he grabs her by the neck and smashes her into the wall.

He's much stronger than he used to be, this new body given a raw power his previous one didn't possess. She shatters.

So does he.

"Dolores?" he whispers, staring at his hands that feel like they're coated in her blood as the slow realization of what he's done sinks into him. She lays in a dozen pieces at his feet, and there are no voices in his head. That's because Dolores is dead. Dolores is dead because he killed her. 

She'll never talk to him again.

He doesn't remember screaming her name, doesn't remember grabbing at the pieces of her body, cutting himself on sharp plastic edges. Doesn't remember the tears or the sobs or clutching her broken hand to his chest. Doesn't remember the flash of light that envelops him as he jumps, leaving behind an empty room, the smashed pieces of a department store mannequin and the jagged shards of his heart. 

  
***

He runs. He runs until his throat is raw and his heart feels like it's going to burst. Until the night air scrapes like razor blades inside his lungs and his legs are shaking and the tears are frozen on his face. He runs until he can't run any farther, collapsing like a toppled hay stack against a random wall in a random alley between two random shops that look the same as all the others under the chiaroscuro streetlights.

He gasps, ragged half-breaths that do nothing to fill his lungs and he leans against rough bricks, squeezing his eyes closed, praying for a nightmare, praying he'll wake up in the surgery or his bed or the couch...anywhere at all that wasn't this place, this moment (this body). Please fucking _Christ_ let it be a nightmare...

But the world is not a kind place tonight.

"Hello Five," says the Handler's voice behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone's having a bad day...


	12. Blood of the Covenant

**7:43pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

He turns slowly, and any hope that she might be nothing more than a voice in his head vanishes. He is no stranger to hallucinations - he had them often enough in the apocalypse - but he has never imagined her, and she's to material too be anything other than real. From the shine of neon lights reflecting off her shoes to the drizzle of rain that dampens her hair, she interacts with the world in subtle ways his visions never did. 

He doesn't bother to wonder how she found him. There's a sense of inevitability to the moment that suggests she never lost track of him at all; that she's simply bided her time until...until what? That's the only real question he needs answered.

"What the hell did you do to me?" he rasps, eyes spitting venom but she is cold and untouchable as always, damnably unconcerned with the troubles of the world and that smile he hates so much gouged into her face like an open wound.

"We did exactly what we promised to do," she replies with malicious cheer, "We made you _better_."

He gapes at her. "You call this better?" And she just laughs at him in return.

"Wouldn't you? You've got your memories back - most of them, anyway - and we've even added a few physical enhancements. Oh, I know you would have preferred something a bit older but that would have raised unnecessary questions." Her voice hardens a bit. "We had an agreement, Five. Work in management, get a new body. Of course we were expecting your tenure to last longer than an afternoon, but a deal is a deal." 

He blinks at her through the rain, hating everything about her. "Where is my body?"

"Whatever do you mean? This _is_ your body."

His hands ball into fists but knows well enough it would be pointless to try jumping; he's too exhausted from the run. "I want to be myself again!"

"I'm afraid that's quite impossible. This is who you are, who you've always been. Fighting against it only prolongs the inevitable; it doesn't change it." But she had said the same thing about the apocalypse.

She sets the suitcase down and takes a step towards him, moving a piece of trash out of the way with the toe of her shoe. He crouches into a fighting stance, weight on the balls of his feet, ready to spring at her. "But I'm afraid we're wasting time with discussion; I'm not here for a social visit. You're wanted back at headquarters."

But why the hell would the Commission want him back? He's made a point of sewing chaos among them every chance he gets, and makes no illusions of wanting a truce. Besides, they've already taken everything he has; what else is left? He doesn't think he'll get an answer that's worth a damn but he asks anyway. "Why?"

She smiles. Cold, reptilian smile, a pantomime of warmth. She gestures towards him, the body he's trapped inside. "Because of this. No expense was spared, I promise. A very impressive piece of work too, if I do say so myself. Very strong, very- very durable. Truly a work of art, and I know you of all people can appreciate good craftsmanship. Oh, don't get me wrong, you have some very special innate abilities already; very useful to our organization. But now, now you're the beginning of something of truly extraordinary. It's really a great honor; you should be proud." Her smile turns vicious. "We gave you that body, Five; it belongs to the Commission. And so do you."

For the second time that day the anger pours through him like molten steel. "Go to hell!" They made a mistake giving him a body this strong, if they didn't expect him to use it against them. He throws himself at her, furious. 

She catches his fist easily, holding him back with seemingly no effort at all. The slap across his face is hard, stinging and the kinetic force of it spins him around, sends him sprawling with his face in the dirt and the taste of blood in his mouth. 

He sneers with his back to her, planning his next move. True he can't jump, but he can still fight. He starts to turn, ready to grab one of those high-heeled ankles and twist until it pops but instead he gets a kick to the chest that slams him into the bricks behind him hard enough his vision whites out.

She's not even breathing hard as she smooths down her skirt. "Really, Five. If bullets and grenades couldn't stop me what chance do you believe you have? Do you think you're the only one who's been improved?" She takes something out of her pocket while he's momentarily stunned, a small metallic cylinder. "Now stop this foolishness and come back with me; I'd rather not damage our inventory." He bares his teeth at her in defiance and she answers with a smirk. "You know, you left so soon, the procedure was only half finished. We gave you a new body; we hadn't quite finished giving you a new mind."

And there it is; the trap they had laid out for him all those months ago. The reason she'd tempted him back to the Commission with the promise of a new body and a family saved from destruction. Had his acceptance been in earnest, had he gone through with the procedure he would have been their creature entirely.

He tries to move again but she's quicker, thumb pressing on a button at the top of the sphere. 

Electricity arcs through his body, every muscle locked into place and his jaw clenched so tight it almost breaks. There's nowhere for the pain to go, no outlet; he can't even scream. It stops almost instantly, but those few seconds leave him weak and shaking on the ground; he's not going anywhere. 

"I'm afraid you left quite a mess back at the Academy," The Handler says conversationally and he realizes that everything that's come before, every evil he's witnessed and plot he's foiled has barely scratched the surface of what the Commission's capable of. But the gloves are off now, and his opponent is far more ruthless than even he'd given them credit for. "Your family is far too fond of involving themselves in the Commission's business, and my employers are no longer amused. The Umbrella Academy has been scheduled for termination, Five. We think you should do the honors."

He takes several hitching breaths, lungs stuttering like a crippled bird, nerves still thrumming with residual pain. "I'll kill myself first."

"No you wont. I'm afraid we didn't program you with a self destruct mechanism."

He manages to lever himself up on shaking arms, pins and needles still running the length of his body. "I'm not going to kill my family!"

She smiles, that hateful smile he knows so well. "Oh yes you will," she says lightly. Her finger moves again and the electric current rips through him, body twisting in agony as his mind blazes like a supernova, white-hot and overwhelming and then, much like those resplendent stars, burns out.

  
  
***

**6:17pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

A burst of energy, coiled ball lightening flashing over the courtyard, air filling with static and a moment later he's there, standing beside the statue of a dead man, drenched in the downpour of rain. His name is Boy and he works for the corrections division of the Temps Aternalis Commission. He is very good; his kills number in the hundreds, and he enjoys his work. This is all he knows about himself. This is all he needs to know. If he ever had another name or another life he doesn't remember it. 

The lights are on in the house and somewhere inside are five targets. He stares up at the academy or mansion or prison...it had a lot of names. He likes to think of it as a mausoleum. All that's missing are a few bodies...

Somewhere inside a man with a number and no name is talking to himself as he sinks further and further into insanity while his family worries and frets, oblivious to the threat on their doorstep. Distracted. The Boy has been briefed on their abilities, their strengths and weaknesses. Conclusion: they're more weakness than strength. No real challenge as long as he stays on top of things.

The mission is clear in his mind: terminate the Hargreeves family. All except the one called Number Five; he's to be spared.

The Boy smiles; a strange, misshapen thing that twists his mouth into unnatural shapes, eyes burning like a cold star. He checks his gun, straightens his tie and walks inside. This is going to be _fun._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more chapter to go! (On this part.)
> 
> Ok, since there's been some slight confusion about the ending: Check the time stamps at the beginning and end of the chapter. The short version is that Five has been Wintered Soldiered. The Boy isn't his old body, just his new conscious. (No word yet on where his original body is.) He's time traveled back to shortly before he left, hence his orders not to kill himself (because that causes all sorts of timey-whimey paradox problems).


	13. Water of the Womb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **READ THE TAGS**  
>  Ok, so this is the chapter where ALL the warnings start coming into play. Violence, character death, all of it. The next couple chapters are gonna have about as much charm and serenity as a maternity ward fire; you've been warned.
> 
> PS: I know I said this was supposed to be the last chapter but earlier in the week I got 2 wisdom teeth pulled and I had some VERY vivid dreams while high on nitrous oxide which caused me to rewrite the chapter and also break it into two parts (so far) cause long chapters give my ADD addled brain anxiety.

**6:15pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Vanya knows Five better than the rest of them (or at least she did, once) and while time and experience have pulled them inexorably away from each other she still knows him well enough to gauge with rough accuracy when it's okay to push, and when it's best to back down.This is one of the backing down moments, but she doesn't get a chance to tell Luther that.

"Fuck off Luther," Five spits, mouth warping horrifically around the words. "Who died and left you in charge?"

It's such a perfect opening Vanya suspects it's deliberate; Five knows Luther wouldn't be able to resist the bait. _Don't_ she thinks at him but it's too late. Five's thrown down the gauntlet and Luther picks it clumsily up, rising to the challenge though he's ill-equipped to go head-to-head with Five in a battle of words. 

"Dad," Luther responds, and Vanya closes her eyes against the flash of triumph on Five's face as Luther walks face first into the trap. "I'm the leader, dad left me in charge-"

"Dad left you on the moon!" Five snarls, and the verbal attack that follows is less an assault than a wholesale slaughter, Five detailing all the ways Luther had failed the Academy, and all the ways their father had failed him. The worst part of it is that Five isn't wrong, even if he isn't completely right either. Another time the tirade would have been enough to bludgeon Luther into silence, but the last few months have changed all of them. Luther takes the abuse and doesn't refute it but he doesn't wilt either, standing steadfast as Five pelted him again and again with words like poison laced darts aimed at his heart. He finishes and the silence rings in Vanya's ears, tension crackling through the room like static. 

"Jesus Five," Diego mutters while Allison and Klaus look on in open-mouthed shock. 

Luther doesn't look shocked. His face is a mixture of hurt and disappointment tinged with something that might be sympathy, but there's no surprise. "Maybe so," he says quietly, "But that doesn't mean we're wrong about this."

More silence, and Vanya doesn't know what she's expecting. A fight of some kind or another, most likely. Accusations, denials, more hurtful words and maybe for Five to tell them all to go to hell and storm out. What she's not expecting is for Five to get distracted. For the fire to leave his eyes, replaced with childlike confusion. For his customary sneer to turn into a puzzled frown.

They trade glances, silently looking to each other for answers and their eyes turn to her because she's supposed to be the resident expert on everything Five but she doesn't know any more than they do. She shakes her head at them with a puzzled look of her own. 

Five blinks and rubs a hand over his face, mumbling under his breath. "This isn't right..." he mutters, and Vanya starts to ask him what he means but he turns away from her, eyes clouded and terribly far away. Worry tugs at her and she stands up as he starts to shake, face going pale but she doesn't have time to do anything else before he's gone, vanishing like a heat mirage. She's not even sure he's aware of the jump. It wouldn't be the first time.

"So...that went well," Luther says, blinking at the empty space where their brother used to be.

"Should we go after him?" Klaus asks, but Vanya shakes her head.

"Give him some time to calm down first," she says, because she has to believe he's at least cognizant enough to be trusted on his own right now. She doesn't know what she'll do if his mind has started slipping away again...she can't go through it a second time. She can't. 

"I'm surprised you even got him out of his room," Allison says, trying to lighten the mood but Vanya just shrugs; she doesn't feel much like talking any more. 

They slowly disperse after that and it's just as well. Five isn't going to come back any time soon and there's nothing to be gained by sitting around brooding. Their bad moods tended only to amplify each other anyway, rising tensions too often giving way to petty squabbling. They're slowing getting better about that, but there's no reason to test anyone's limits right now. Vanya escapes to the kitchen. The lounge feels claustrophobic, heavy as an iron curtain and she needs air. Maybe she'll try to find Five herself, get him to talk to her. She'd have better luck on her own anyway.

Surprisingly, she doesn't have to go looking. He scares the hell out of her in the kitchen, appearing out of nowhere in wet clothes with hair dripping from the rain, pale as a poltergeist and eyes like bullet holes punched through his head. 

"Jesus!" she swears, jumping back. She _hates_ it when he does that. She's about to tell him so but the words die an ignoble death on her lips, shriveling away to nothing because something has happened; something's _wrong_. It's nothing she can pinpoint, nothing tangible. Maybe it's the way he's staring at her, something hungry in his face and a predatory gleam in his eyes that makes her shudder. She feels in an oddly literal way like someone's just walked over her grave. "Five?" she asks, and every fiber in her body screams at her to keep her distance. 

He smiles, dark amusement curling the edges of his mouth and she shudders again. "Vanya," he says her name like he's testing it out, and she take an involuntary step back. "Where are the others?"

Illogically, she finds herself reluctant to tell him. But that didn't make any sense. _Wrong_ her brain flashes at her, and she trips over her own words. "I- I'm not sure." And then, because she'd be an idiot to ignore her instinct when it comes to Five, "Are you okay?" He isn't, she _knows_ he isn't. She hopes he'll tell her why.

He watches her and for a moment he isn't really Five, just a stranger who wore her brother's clothes and her brother's face. Then a sound escapes him, almost a sob and his face crumples. "I don't know," he says, voice small and frightened and her heart aches in profound empathy. What if it's happening again? What if his mind is unraveling all over again and he's just scared and confused? She reaches towards him despite herself, wanting to comfort. "Hey, hey it's okay- whatever's wrong- it's okay." She risks a step forward, then a touch, hand resting gently against his shoulder. Surprisingly he doesn't pull away but rather leans into her, arms encircling her in a tentative embrace.

"Oh-" he hasn't hugged her like that in years; not since they were children together against the world. Not since the world took him from her and sent back a broken, jaded man haunted by the future. He hugs her and she returns it, her whole heart and soul in the gesture. "It's okay," she says again, closing her eyes and pretending for a moment that those words could be true.

He holds her tightly, hands moving to the back of her head, stroking her hair...

It happens devastatingly quick, the space between one heartbeat and the next, his hands moving with practiced ease to either side of her head. There's a twist, a pop, the sickening crack of snapping bone and Vanya falls to the floor, eyes still open but no longer seeing anything at all. There wasn't even time to scream.

The Boy leans down and brushes gentle fingers against her neck. Satisfied at the stillness of flesh and lack of pulse he stashes the body and leaves, the most dangerous of his targets having been neutralized with no trouble at all. In the end it was almost insultingly easy...and here he thought he might have to break a sweat.

Well, four to go.

  
  
***

**6:39pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Klaus is upstairs in his room when the power cuts out. 

Fact: Klaus _really_ doesn't like the dark. He's lived too long with one foot in the cold void of death to find anything comforting about either solitude or darkness. The upside to this is that he keeps a variety of flashlights, flood lamps and other light bringing accouterments stashed in his room. He's rarely needed them but knowing they're there had always brought him comfort (not as much comfort as drugs, but it was a sliding scale). 

"Ah, man," he grumbles as the light vanishes, and there's no way of knowing if it's localized to his wing of the house or not. It's nearly dark out and the thin grey line of twilight on the western horizon wouldn't be enough to see by even if this side of the house _didn't_ face east. Fortunately he's already in his bedroom so it's a small matter of dragging the plastic tub out from under his bed and fishing around for a flashlight. He flips it on hoping the batteries still work and is rewarded with a warm beam of light that chases away both the shadows and the anxiety they produced. Technology was awesome. He grabs an extra in case he runs into anyone else fumbling around in the dark and goes to figure out what happened.

No lie, the mansion's fucking _eerie_ in the dark, reminding him of the setting from some over-produced video game. Everything's shadows and doors, labyrinthine staircases and maze-like hallways. The flashlight casts monstrous shadows on the wall, priceless antiques and ornate furniture throwing up jagged black outlines like teeth. 

For some very obvious reasons, Klaus dislikes horror movies even more than he dislikes the dark. He's spent most of his life being scared shitless of things that go bump in the night and sees no reason to pay for the privilege. Besides, it's kinda hard to get a cheap thrill out of watching someone get hacked to pieces by a machete wielding maniac after the first time he woke up to a murder victim by his bedside pleading for mercy (he was ten).

Point is, Klaus is _not_ having a good time, so when he sees Vanya standing in the hallway with her back to him he gives a sigh of relief. "Oh, Vanya, thank Christ. Looks like power's out over the whole mansion. Wouldn't happen to remember where the fuse box is wou-"

She turns and his voice cuts out like a bad audio feed. _No._

"Klaus?" she asks, head flopping unnaturally to one side, looking at him quizzically with a strange sideways glance as her head wobbled around on a twisted neck. _No._

He drops the flashlight, organs shriveling in horror and his brain just sort of...shuts off. _No!_

This is not happening. He is not seeing this. This is an illusion, a hallucination. A nightmare. Whatever it is, the one thing it isn't is _real_. He is not seeing his sister's fucking _ghost_ standing in front of him. He'd seen Vanya less than twenty minutes ago. She'd been fine. She takes a step towards him and he takes a step back, monkey brain gibbering at him in uncomprehending panic. Everything inside him is telling him to run, but his feet are nailed to the floor with iron spikes of sheer terror. "Vanya?" he whispers, already feeling the tears spring to his eyes because as much as he's trying to convince himself that none of this is real, he knows it is. He knows. "Jesus Christ-" his voice breaks, and on the other side of the horror is a vast ocean of soul-crushing grief, endless as the sky. "What-" 

"Five," Vanya says, a look of profound sadness on her face even as her head flopped about near her chest.

His brain manages to latch onto the word despite itself. "Five? What about him? Is he okay? What happened!?"

"Five!" she screams, pointing behind him and Klaus turns even though there's no way to see in the swallowed dark of the hall without the light, which is still on the floor. Something comes whistling out of the black; he doesn't see or hear it as much as sense it, an entire childhood of survival drills and combat training tripping all the klaxons in his horror shocked brain. 

That turn saves his life, the knife passing so close it knicks his arm before continuing it's deadly trajectory down the hallway. "What the _fuck_?" he says, looking down at the thin sliver of red on his bicep. If he hadn't moved it would have been his back.

At the end of the hall there's a brief flair of light, familiar to him somehow but he's operating on basic instincts right now and doesn't have any attention to spare. Someone is trying to kill them. (Someone already had.) He needed to get to his siblings and get everyone the hell out of here. He looks the other way but Vanya is gone and he's not prepared for the profound ache in his chest the thought brings.

She's gone.

But he doesn't have time to mourn. He grabs the light and thunders down the hallway, yelling for his family. There's a killer on the upper floor so he races down the stairs and it occurs to him that whoever's after them was clever enough to cut the power and now their choices are to run around with flashlights like neon arrows pinpointing their locations or fumble around in the dark. It's almost too subtle for what he's seen of the Commission, but who else could it be?

He gets to the bottom of the stairs and almost runs into Five. 

His brother is crouched down, hovering over something Klaus can't see in the thin beam of light. "Five!" he shouts, relief washing over him at finding someone living. Five freezes, turning slowly towards him and Klaus' relief is quickly swallowed by a fresh influx of confusion and fear. "What the fuck!?" he whispers, because whoever he's looking at right now, it's not his brother. 

Five's face is warped, twisted into something monstrous by the goblin's grin that splits his face in two and the insanity shining in his eyes. Klaus hates horror movies and now he's trapped in one, staring at a doppelganger brother that looks like Five in all the unimportant ways and all Klaus can think is that Five's finally snapped for good, finally lost his mind completely and irrevocably and then he sees what Five had been kneeling over. 

It's Allison. Or what's left of her. 

Klaus feels his stomach heave, bile in his throat and somehow Five's grin gets even wider as he raises a bloody knife to his lips and licks it clean, eyes locked on Klaus' own. Five isn't mourning Allison, isn't bothered by her death at all and the terror on Klaus' face only seems to amuse him. Klaus doesn't even have time to react before the knife is hurtling towards him and he realizes he's going to die...

There's no pain, no impact and for half a heartbeat he can't figure out why he isn't dead until he notices the blue-tinted tentacle in front of his chest, knife buried up to the hilt. "Go!" Ben shouts as a second tentacle slams into Five, sending him hurtling through the air and against the far wall. "Go! Find Luther and Diego! Get out of here!"

It's too much...it's too much to process, too much to take in so Klaus doesn't try, just turns and scrambles out of the room, tears running down his face and brain sparking like a faulty fuse as it slips into shock. Five is crazy. Five is insane. Five is a goddamn murdering son of a bitch. Vanya had tried to tell him when he asked her what happened but he hadn't listened, hadn't understood and now Five's killed Allison and tried to kill him and-

And Five leaps out of a wormhole, landing dead center on Klaus' back. One thin arm wraps around his head, pulling it back while his other hand runs a blade across his throat. Klaus topples over like a bag of apples, blood spreading over the floor while Ben screams and screams and screams his name, and then stops.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me (but if you do, feel free to yell at me about it in the comments).
> 
> **UPDATE 6/25/19:** It's winter on this side of the planet and I have pneumonia. Won't be updating for a bit. Apologies.


	14. Shadows Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update this chapter. Life's been crazy.

**6:52pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

"Holy shit," Diego says, staring at the large panel in the basement which held the vast array of circuit breakers and fuses that supplied power to the whole of the mansion. When the electricity cut out he and Luther had come down here to try and get it started again. Luther was actually pretty good with stuff like that, his four year stint on the moon seconding as a crash course in electronic repair with the steep learning curve of 'fix it or die'.

Right now he's not sure how useful either of them are going to be. Someone had tripped the main circuit breaker and smashed in its panel for good measure; a clear act of sabotage. 

"We've got to find the others," Luther says, voice tight as he runs his flashlight over the mess, surveying the damage. "This was intentional, someone's here." 

_No shit,_ Diego thinks acerbically, but out loud he says, "We need to get the backup generator working, salvage what we can. Whoever's here is prepared to work in the dark and we're all running around with flashlights. Easy targets."

"So this is the part of the movie where we split up?" Luther says without humor. "You're knives aren't going to do you any good if you can't see them coming."

"But you're better with this sort of thing than I am," Diego points out. They spend a few precious moments bickering about it before deciding with a flash of emotional maturity that would have made Grace proud that now probably isn't the best time to have a clash of personalities. Luther goes, Diego stays and neither of them are keen on the idea but there are too many things to do and not enough bodies to go around.

Diego gets to work and keeps his knives handy. Whoever's here must know someone would come to the basement for this exact purpose; it's the perfect setup for an ambush.

Fortunately things could have been a lot worse. He checks the generators and finds them undamaged, which means if he can get the transfer switch repaired and bypass the damaged circuits they'd be able to restore power to enough of the mansion to at least give themselves a fighting chance. He gets a couple battery lanterns working so he doesn't have to work one handed while trying to hold a flashlight and-

"Diego!" 

He yelps and drops the multi tool, spinning around to give Klaus a piece of his mind- and stops, mouth hanging open. His stomach drops like an elevator in free fall and every single thought leaves his head, leaves it feeling hollowed out and caved in like a rotting jack-o'-lantern and his first instinct is to ask his brother what the hell kind of practical joke he's playing, and why he thought now would be a good time to do it. 

Except it's not a joke. His brother's face tells him that much. "Klaus?" he asks, but it's not Klaus, it can't be Klaus because Klaus is flesh and blood, annoyingly real. This is something else, a projector-screen image, blue-tinged and flickering. _Dead_ , a voice in the back of his head supplies but he shies away from it.

"Diego!" Klaus shouts again, brilliant blue light radiating from his clenched fists.

"Klaus- what the hell?" He knows what he's looking at but rejects it wholesale. _This isn't real._

"It's Five!"

"Five?" he parrots dumbly, aware enough to know he's in some kind of shock, to know he needs to be thinking more clearly than he is.

"He's gone crazy," Klaus says, gaping wound at his neck pulsing grotesquely with each word and Jesus Christ...is this what Klaus sees when he looked at the dead? No wonder he's a junkie. _Was,_ the voice reminds him. _He_ was _a junkie. Now he's dead._

"He killed Vanya, Allison-"

"And you?" Diego whispers, and Klaus nods. There are tear tracks spilling double lines down his face; an eternal weeping ghost. 

Maybe it was all those years of combat training, or the plain insanity of their everyday lives but Diego finds himself pulling out of the shock and dealing with the horror faster than he suspects a more well-adjusted person might, frozen gears of his brain finally starting to turn.

_"You will see many horrors in life,"_ he hears Reginald's voice tell him, _"and many dangers will present themselves without warning. You must learn to accept both horror and danger in a moment. To hesitate is to die."_

"Five did this?" he clarifies, shaking hands going for his knives.

Klaus nods. And Diego had sent Luther into the danger alone...there was no way Luther stood a chance against Five. To be honest, he's not sure any of them really stand a chance against him. He's seen what his brother's capable of. Five was...ruthless, is the kindest word Diego can find for it. Utterly ruthless in a firefight. And if he's crazy too- "Shit," Diego swears. He looks at Klaus, who seems to be channeling all his energy into remaining corporeal. "Find Luther," Diego tells him, and doesn't think about his dead siblings.

Klaus nods and disappears.

Reginald's voice is in his head, telling him to stiffen his spine, to focus. There was a threat, and it didn't matter what form it took. Diego supposes it's been a long time coming, this psychotic break or whatever it is, Five's slow spiral into total madness. Diego backs into a corner so Five wouldn't be able to materialize behind him and grabs his knifes, spinning them nervously. 

Then there's nothing to do but wait, even though his every instinct is telling him to go and find whatever's left of his family. But he couldn't fight Five out in the open; his brother had the keen advantage of spacial jumps, and that wasn't something you could plan for. If you were a target then by the time you saw Five it was already too late. Standing there in the dark, feeling the adrenaline flood through his body it does occur to him that maybe _he's_ the crazy one, that Klaus wasn't real at all and he's been having a conversation with a voice in his head but even viewed objectively that made no sense. After all, of the two of them he's not the one who slipped into dementia and holds one-sided conversations with a mannequin. Unfortunately, if Five really has snapped Diego isn't going to get the chance to verify. He's got one shot at this; Five's too damn fast for another. 

He doesn't have long to wait. Only a few minutes later there's a flicker of light and the familiar soft _whoosh_ of a portal opening. 

_"You must not hesitate to face danger."_ Diego doesn't. The first knife is leaving his hand almost before Five is finished stepping out of the portal. The lanterns don't send light quite far enough for him to see much at the far end of the basement but he trusts his aim; his talents and his powers. The second knife follows, curving slightly on it's deadly trajectory. He hears a grunt, and the sickening sound of a blade sinking into flesh. He sends a third knife spinning into the darkness and prays for forgiveness.

But there's no God here tonight. One of his own blood covered knives comes back at him. He barely has time to register what he's seeing before he feels it tear through the muscle underneath his clavicle, knocking him back and he drops to his knees as Five materializes in front of him, dripping blood and it's like looking through a shattered mirror. Five is a fractured image of himself, a thousand slivers held together by the thinnest of glues, eyes like pits of tar and Diego can see the fires of hell burning at the bottom. There's no doubt any more that his brother is completely insane. 

Diego's breath is ragged, labored and it takes him too long, much too long to pull his mind away from those fathomless black holes in his brother's face and when he does he's staring at an entirely different hole, this one belonging to the muzzle of a gun. The hammer cocks and Diego goes cold with the certainty of death. "Five-"

Diego never gets the chance to finish his sentence and Five never gets the chance to pull the trigger. Instead he's thrown off his feet and the gun goes flying as Luther crashes into him in a linebacker's tackle that sends them both sprawling. 

"Luther!" Diego shouts, and even _that_ hurts. He doesn't pull the knife out of his shoulder because if he did he'd probably bleed out, but Luther doesn't stand any more of a chance alone against Five than he does so he ignores the radio static in his head and the raw screaming of his nerves and tries getting to his feet. Even as he watches Five vanishes and reappears behind Luther, who turns just in time to keep from getting a knife in the back, deflecting the blow with one massive arm.

Luther glances over and sees Diego struggling to rise. "Stay behind me!" he yells, blocking another attack from Five, who has one of Diego's own knives clutched in his small hand.

"You can't beat him alone!" Diego tries to stand a second time, feeling the knife fetch up against bone as his body moves and the pain makes him dizzy, makes him sink uselessly down against the wall again and this was nothing like the movies where the hero was free to keep going so long as all the major organs were intact. For that matter, why the hell was _Five_ able to keep going? Diego had hit him at least once; he knows he did but Five's acting like he hadn't even felt it. 

Luther is desperate now, sweat on his brow as Five attacks again and again, weaving in and out of range like a mongoose. Luther lands a blow that would have pulverized a full grown man let alone a thirteen year old boy but Five barely seems to register the contact, a feral smile stretching his face into ghastly shapes, cruel and filled with happy malice and Diego has the sickening realization that he's toying with Luther; that it's all just a game to him. "Get out of here!" Diego yells, because at some point Five is going to get tired of playing and then Luther will die.

Luther doesn't listen, of course he doesn't listen the dumb, stubborn bastard. He's going to die a pointless martyr's death trying to protect Diego which is stupid as hell because Diego is just as dead as Klaus and Allison and Vanya are. As dead as Luther will be. Five's going to slaughter them all with a smile on his face.

They trade blows again and Five's fists are more powerful than they have any right to be, Luther slowly giving way under the barrage, fighting back with everything he has but often as not hitting empty air as Five dances and warps around him. Finally his fist connects with Five's jaw, splitting his lip open on his own teeth. That lunatic grin turns into a sneer and then Five is gone, whispering away and Luther doesn't even have time to recover before he reappears over by the far wall where the gun had fallen.

Diego had opened his mouth to scream out a warning but it turns to a scream of denial instead as the first bullet slams into Luther's chest, jerking him back like a puppet, pained shock on his face. He coughs, blood on his lips and staggers towards Five who fires again, and again and again, emptying the magazine into Luther's body until their titan of a brother falls like an oak, smashing onto the ground in a pool of his own blood.

Diego reaches up and pulls the knife free because it's his only weapon and if he's going to die anyway then by God he's going down fighting. He holds it in a shaking, blood slicked hand, vision spotting from pain but fortunately for him he doesn't actually need to see to hit what he's aiming at.

He doesn't get the chance to raise his arm before Five is on top of him, grabbing his wrist and twisting, driving Diego's own hand toward his chest and burying the knife in it. He feels the blood flood into his esophagus, rising like bile and he chokes, coughing up frothy crimson bubbles.

"Five-" he breathes, eyes wide and disbelieving. 

His brother bends down, mouth next to Diego's ear. "My name's not Five." He twists the knife, pulls it free and wipes it clean on Diego's sleeve. Diego whimpers, shudders and goes still, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

  
  
***

**7:34pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

There's the distinct sizzling crack of an energy charge and the young man steps forward out of the hissing oblivion of a wormhole, open briefcase in his hand. He sniffs the air and wrinkles his nose at the smell, the stink of teleportation and time travel, the metallic scorched-atom stench of a temporal anomaly searing it's way through reality. The fabric of time feels thin here, stretched like dough that's been rolled out and folded in on itself and pulled apart again; shenanigans of one sort or another have definitely occurred. 

The lights don't work and that's never a good sign. 

He finds the first body in the hallway. Slit throat, clean kill; efficient work at least. He spends longer than he should staring at it before continuing on his way. The second one is laying by the stairs, horribly mutilated. Whoever was behind this one had _fun_. (Looked a bit like Kosminski's work but he isn't sure. It's not like he's spent his time studying the MO's after all.) 

It takes awhile to find the two brothers in the basement and it's clear they'd both gone down fighting; it's also clear it hadn't done a bit of good. He wonders which member of 'the family' would take credit for it and then decides not to think about it. He's here for a reason and it isn't morbid introspection. He frowns, touching the grey, lifeless bodies. Algor mortis hasn't set in; the flesh is cool, but not yet cold. Looks like he'd missed the fun by less than an hour. So much could happen in an hour...time was funny like that. 

That left one more and it's over an hour later before he finds her stuffed into the crawl space in the kitchen, her neck snapped with brutal efficiency. She would have been the first otherwise she wouldn't have been hidden, wouldn't have died in such a quiet way. 

At least it had been too fast for her to feel any pain. It'd get to him if he didn't know better. (If it is getting to him he doesn't let himself acknowledge it. Hazard of the job, that kind of thing.)

So no one had made it out alive; he can't say he's surprised. If he expected anything else he wouldn't be here.

He lowers her to the floor and closes the eyes that are staring at him like an accusation. "We're sorry," he says softly, stroking a bit of her hair. "It's going to be okay." He stands up, brushes himself off, straightens his tie. Grabs the briefcase and set the coordinates. He looks at her once more with an infinitely sad smile. "We'll see you in an hour," he says and disappears as time starts m ov i ng sdrawkcab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I haven't been trying to leave you guys twisting in anticipation. Everyone in the house got sick at exactly the same time and my particular illness developed into pneumonia so...it's been a shit week. Very little writing/editing to be done. 
> 
> I still might tinker with the chapter a bit; I don't know. Have to see how I feel.


	15. Hang Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not mean to leave everyone on a cliffhanger one chapter before the end of part 2. Life happened. Life has been given a stern talking to and put back in it's place.

**6:20pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**  
(Again) 

His name is Aaron Kosminski and his hunting grounds are the fog choked streets of Victorian London, his victims the tarnished women in stained petticoats who trade their bodies for a few grimy coins. They disgust him, and he murders five of them before sinking back into the hellish shadows of the polluted city that coughed him up. He is never caught.

His name is Herman Mudgett, and he owns a hotel that doubles as a shrine to murder. There he leads over two dozen people to their deaths and carries out horrific experiments on their bodies. He will confess to twenty-seven murders. He will be convicted of nine. He will be hanged.

His name is Ted Bundy, and Belle Gunness and Yang Xinhai. He lurks in every civilization, every society from one end of history to the other. He has lived a hundred lives and taken thirty times that number. His name is Boy and he is Frankenstein's Monster made grotesquely real. Murder has been bred into his DNA. The blood of a hundred killers flows in his veins, their voices chitter in his head. They peer out of eyes that see the world in a fractured, kaleidoscopic swirl of madness. He does not know peace but he does know obedience, and loyalty, and devotion to a cause. The cause is death, and his loyalty is to the Commission. 

That is _all_ he knows.

They have sent him to kill five people for reasons that are unimportant. They gave him their brother's face to wear, and if he were capable of such autonomous thoughts he might be insulted at the implication that he needed to resort to such subterfuge, but he is not. The thoughts in his head are of a far more primal, far more gruesome nature.

The plan, the _plan_ , had been to target the woman Vanya first. Strongest and least disciplined of the siblings, she posed the greatest threat to him. Her power to change sound waves into kinetic energy - with catastrophic results - meant he would need to be fast and quiet. He'd found her in the kitchen, soft and doe eyed and so very small...the voices in his head gurgled and gibbered, his hands itched to fit themselves around her tiny throat.

The _plan_ had been to lure her close using her brother's likeness, snap her neck and be done with her. Simple, easy. The Boy found simple plans to be the best.

But before he could do any of that he has first to deal with the small matter of the intruder who's appeared in the kitchen with them and is clearly there to compromise his mission. He's tall and lean and young, possibly younger than the woman, certainly no older. He stinks of time travel, of crossed timelines and oblivion. If there is something familiar in his face Boy doesn't dwell on it. Spend long enough traveling through history and eventually everyone looks vaguely familiar. What really catches his attention (what really pisses him off) is that the man's holding a Commission briefcase, and The Boy can tell with an animal sort of instinct that he isn't there on behalf of any Commission order.

How _dare_ he.

The Boy snarls, baring teeth like an animal. The woman starts, confused, eyes going from the stranger to him and back again, widening as she sees the briefcase. "Five!" she shouts a warning, the man glances at her and that's when The Boy attacks, phasing through a wormhole to the stranger's side. He will kill this impostor, finish his mission and bring his disembodied head back to the Commission. 

There is a brief moment of blindness when traveling through a wormhole, one side to the other. The Boy has always referred to it as the saccade, and it lasts approximately one half a second. This is rarely long enough for anything significant to happen, particularly when a target is gaping in shock at the empty place he used to be. This time however it means that when The Boy crosses the vortex, there is a gun waiting for him on the other side.

He's been _anticipated_ , stepped directly into the line of fire and the man doesn't wait the hair's breath it would take for The Boy to warp away. He pulls the trigger with the methodical calm of a professional killer, and no one is fast enough to dodge a bullet; not even him.

Distantly he hears the woman scream. There's a rush like wind before a hurricane and it flattens the hair against his forehead as as it passes him by. The man however gets hit full in the chest, bearing the brunt of her enormous power. It throws him backwards and there's a familiar, satisfying thud of a body hitting a wall. The Boy glances down; he's bleeding, the bullet having passed through his side. A fraction of an inch more and it would have hit his liver. He watches in fascination as a dark stain spreads across his clothes, lovely deep red. 

Then the woman is there, hands fluttering in panic, reminding him of broken-backed kittens and other useless, twitching things. "Oh god Five are you okay-!" her voice cuts off has he grabs her by the throat. What pain he feels doesn't break the baseline threshold, and thus is ignored. Bullets or not, there is still a mission. There is always a mission. (There is only ever the mission.) She stares at him wide eyed, uncomprehending and as he starts to squeeze the confusion turns to panic and fear. 

It looks good on her and he smiles appreciatively.

He's barely started enjoying himself when he feels the frayed-nerve sensation of a portal opening near him and hands like steel clamps grab him from behind, prying him off the woman with perplexing strength. "Vanya! He's not your br-" Boy silences him with an elbow to the jaw, and it's clear he's going to have to kill this man before he can finish the business that brought him here. He growls, grabs his knife and attacks.

  
  
***

Klaus hits the stairs running, the commotion in the kitchen and the sound of Vanya's scream sending adrenaline pumping through his veins like a cocaine high and he nearly breaks his neck on the way down, falling the last couple of steps to the bottom. He gets to her first, the others piling up behind him, panic causing them to trip over rugs and their own feet and each other in a mad rush. 

He's expecting masked intruders with guns or men in dark suits with briefcases. Threats, tangible and real. But there's only Vanya there on the floor, pale and shaking, her eyes brittle and over-bright. She's distressed, hyperventilating, and he knows too well what can happen when she gets like that. (She's better, so much better now but still, you didn't shrug off something like the world coming to an end.)

Moving at a speed that would have made Five proud he's at her side in an instant, checking for blood or broken bones or bullet wounds (none, thank god). He throws his arms around her and pulls her small body against his, feeling the rataplan thunder of her heartbeat. It had to be the Commission; what else could frighten her this badly? "Shhh, shhh," he says, trying to calm her down because there was every chance she was a danger to them all right now too. 

"Where are they? What's happening?" Luther's bulk fills the doorway and Allison comes forward, glancing first at Vanya and then at Klaus, a question in her eyes. He shakes his head at her helplessly.

"F-Five," she rasps, giving him a splintered look and Klaus feels his heart drop into his shoes. _Not again._ Not fucking _again_. "Where is he?" At least he wasn't helpless this time, wasn't lost inside his head, wasn't laying weak and unprotected his childhood bed, too far gone to keep from being taken.

But he wasn't well, either. 

"Vanya," he says, giving her a gentle shake, and Luther steps forward, hunkering down in a subconscious bid to make himself smaller and less imposing.

"Where's Five? What's going on?" he asks, urgency in his voice.

She shakes her head, which doesn't help them at all. "He's not-" she loses the words and her hand goes to her throat as she coughs. On a gut instinct Klaus tilts her chin up and knows exactly what he's starting at. It's not bad, not so very bad and it could have been a lot worse (boy does he know about _that_ ), but that isn't the point. Someone had laid their hands on his sister and Klaus finds himself reacting to that about the way he suspects most brothers would.

"Who did this!?" Who would have gotten close enough to do it, is what he really wants to ask. And where did they go, because Klaus would really like to have a chat.

At least one of those questions is answered by a crash from the floor above, and then a gunshot, and then two more. Klaus takes a quick inventory of his siblings and of course Five is the odd man out. 

Sounds like they found him. He can only hope they found him in a mood to fight back. (It certainly sounded like it.) He doesn't bother to share any of that insight with the others because they're moving already, following the distinctive sound of their brother's deadly brand of chaos. 

Klaus stays where he is, keeping Vanya tucked protectively against his side. "It's okay," he says soothingly. "It's going to be okay."

Vanya shakes her head at him and starts to cry.

***

Diego skids to a halt at top of the stairs, knives out and breathing hard and the smell of ozone is so strong he can almost taste it, the air still hazy with the after-shimmer of spacial portals opening and closing in rapid fire all around him. Whatever's happening, it's intense. "Everyone stay behind me," he calls back, knowing damn well he's going to be ignored.

 As predicted Luther doesn't acknowledge this, just charges past like a red-sighted bull, looking for Five or Five's enemies or something, anything that can tell him what the hell's going on. There's another rapid burst of gunfire, this time on the floor below and they all exchange brief, tense glances before thundering back down the steps. It occurs to Diego that Five is trying to direct the fight away from them, and it's working, for now. But Five only had so much energy, could only jump so many times. This was the kind of thing that had broken him in the first place, that started his rapid slide into mental disintegration. Diego grips his knives tighter and doesn't give a shit about Five's martyrdom. He's not going to let his brother destroy himself all over again. 

"We should split up," Diego says as they reach the bottom of the steps and the sound of gunfire moves away again. Luther looks at him like he's nuts. 

"We don't know who's out there," he argues. "How many there are, what they're doing here-"

Diego cuts him off, because they don't have time for this. "They're here to kill Five," he says flatly, "probably us too. You notice every time we get close the fighting moves off? He's keeping them away from us. But we both know he can't keep that up forever. What if some of them are still alive when he gets too tired to jump?"

Luther considers and starts to nod in reluctant agreement when the air shimmers and shifts in front of them, stretching like a rubber band and their brother stumbles out, breathing hard and weakened with exhaustion. He pitches forward and they reach out in tandem, grabbing for his arms. "Woah! Five, it's okay-"

Diego uses knives like an extension of himself, and his talents go beyond preternatural aim. He _understands_ them on an intuitive level, in a way he could never put into words. He knows how the body moves with a knife in it's hand, knows instinctively all the minute signs of a surprise attack; the subtle shifts in weight, the way the muscles gather at the shoulder as the arm coils with energy, ready to strike. He can very nearly sense the presence of a knife and that's how he knows what's about to happen.

He doesn't think about it and that's a good thing because if he had he would have hesitated, and Luther probably would have died. He just shoves his brother away, a warning on his lips. "Watch out!" 

In the Luther-sized space his brother had just occupied a knife slices through the air, arcing around in a graceful, deadly half circle and coming back towards Diego. But he's already moved out of the danger zone, his own knife up and he's staring at Five in shocked incredulity. "What the hell!"

Five doesn't answer, he just attacks and the only thing Diego can think is that the firefight was too much, that Five pushed himself past his limit again and this time there was no slow erosion of the mind, no long kiss goodnight. Just a quick, irrevocable descent into...whatever _this_ was. This deadly madness. Diego doesn't think Five is seeing his brothers, just targets that need to be eliminated. He moves back, ceding ground to his mad sibling. He doesn't want to have to fight his brother. (Not like this, this isn't like the fights he has with Luther. This is real; Five is trying to kill them and Diego doesn't know how to make him stop.) 

Five tries to warp but all that comes of it is a pathetic sizzle, brief light curling around his hands only to dissipate again. At least they didn't have that to worry about, though Five was dangerous enough without it. He's also injured, entire right side of his body red with blood and it's throwing him off his game. Even so, a Five who's in kill mode isn't someone to tangle with. The problem is Five is a _lot_ stronger than he used to be or should be or could be or whatever, and about the only one of them who stands much of a chance right now is Luther. "Pin him down!" Diego shouts as Luther throws himself into the fray but he isn't as fast as Five, and he's trying not to hurt. Five has no such reservations.

The knife flashes, tearing through fabric and opening a trench along Luther's chest. Not fatal but messy and painful and Luther falls back under the onslaught as Allison steps up, ready to rumor Five into unconsciousness if that's what it takes. She catches Diego's eye and he nods at her. 

She hesitates, weighted down by the memory of all the times she's had to break the vow she made to herself, all the times she's had to imprint her will over Five's own but Luther yells "Do it!" as Five raises the knife again and she inhales.

"I heard a rumor you weren't going to hurt anyone!" she shouts, and Five freezes, mouth still twisted in contempt. Luther scuttles out from under him and Diego darts forward, grabbing him under his massive arms and hauling him backwards. 

Five's teeth clench, his muscles straining against Allison's power and if looks could kill, their whole family tree would be on fire. His face ripples, emotions Diego can't identify (and some he doesn't want to) passing over his features. He starts to lower the knife, stops, clearly at war with himself or the Suggestion or something...Diego glances at her and Allison gives a small shake of her head; she doesn't know what's happening either. 

"Five?" Diego chances and his brother's eye focus on him, furious and tormented. "My...name's...not _Five,_ " he snarls, breaking free of the Suggestion and lunging forward again, striking fast as a serpent. Diego isn't expecting it; as far as he knows no one's ever thrown off a Suggestion before. (He didn't think it was possible.)

He doesn't have time to defend himself. 

He'll spend a long time afterwards replaying the next sequence of events. Usually while drunk.

What happens - remarkably - is that he doesn't die. There's another shimmer, a coruscation of electric blue and a man is there, throwing himself in the way of Five's deadly attack and blocking with his own arm. "Get the fuck out of here!" he shouts at them, and his appearance only enrages Five more, sends him into a near apoplectic fit and he literally foams at the mouth, rabid and feral and - as far as Diego can tell - completely psychotic.

The two tear into each other and it's impossible to say who might have the advantage. Their movements are fluid, near perfect mirrors of each other and it's more like watching a complicated bit of choreography than a fight. They seem able to anticipate each other's moves, parrying, thrusting, whipping around one another with deadly focus, the air between them filled with knives and death. If they had other weapons, they've been lost. Diego doesn't throw anything because he's not sure he could hit the right target even with his power, they're moving so damn _fast_.

Weirdly, he's not even sure who the right target is.

The thing about fighting for one's life is that it all comes down to instinct; lizard brain responses and core human nature, and at the core of each of the Hargreeves' was an instinct to protect their siblings from everything but themselves and each other. Diego's lizard brain should be telling him to help his brother. It isn't, and that is exactly the wrong way for things to be, like he'd gone to sleep and woken up in some Bizzaro World where up was down.

Luther gets up and starts forward but Diego stops him with a hand on his shoulder. "Wait."

"He needs us!" Luther says, and that might be true. The man's gotten the upper hand for the moment, using Five's obvious injury against him. But Diego hadn't seen anything of his brother in the boy's eyes. The stranger on the other hand...

"Five!" Luther shouts, and the man glances over. Five doesn't. Five uses the moment's distraction to try and bury his knife into his opponent's heart. It almost works, only that strange precognition saving him, causing him to twist at the last moment and the knife to sink into his arm instead. The man grabs him, pulling him close even as he falls to his knees. They collapse together, the man rolling on top of Five, who's furious struggles grow steadily weaker. 

_Now_ they're moving, the three of them darting forward and pulling the two away from each other, both of them covered in blood. Five has the handle of a knife sticking out of his throat, and he glares at them with hatred burning in his eyes as he chokes to death on his own blood, feet thumping uselessly against the floor. The stranger just looks exhausted. And familiar.

Diego doesn't have a chance to tell Luther not to be stupid before his brother grabs the man by the throat ("You son of a bitch!") fist pulling back, ready to make mince out of his face. Behind them Allison is weeping softly.

"Luther-" the man rasps, blinking up at him with hazel eyes Diego would recognize anywhere. Or anywhen. 

"Let him go," Diego orders, but Luther doesn't answer because Luther's just lost a brother, and he's never very sharp when he's grieving. 

"He killed Five!" he shouts, and Diego has about as much chance of stopping a speeding train as he does Luther's fist but he tries anyway, grabbing onto his arm with his whole body. 

" _This_ is Five! Luther, stop! It's Five, look- look at him! It's Five!" He says it again and again, because sometimes you had to beat Luther over the head with an idea before it'd take hold. 

It takes a bit for Diego's words to penetrate through his brother's anguish but eventually Luther looks, and Luther _sees_. Ten years or so makes a difference, but not so very much of one. Not to the people who know you. Not to family.

"But-" Luther drops him, glancing back at the still body of a very dead boy, then back again. "How..." Allison sinks to her knees next to them, reaching out. "Five?" she asks, tears still streaming down her face.

There's no one else it could be. The last traces of baby softness are gone, features cut and angular, but they're Five's features and if Diego squints he can almost see the boy in the man he's become, just like he could almost see the man in Five's thirteen year old self. It's the eyes that really get him though. Eyes were supposed to be windows to the soul. Five's eyes are like portals to another world. But they're familiar in a way the other Five's hadn't been. (And really, of the two of them _this_ Five wasn't trying to kill them, so that was a pretty strong point in his favor.)

"What the hell's going on?" Luther says, confused and hurt and with nowhere to channel his grief, grief that might not even be necessary now, but that he felt all the same. "How are you- alive? Older? What..."

Allison has questions of her own. They all do. About a million of them. "If you're Five then who's that?" she asks, very deliberately not looking at the body who's blood was filling the hallway. 

Five closes his eyes, wincing as he shifts into a more comfortable position. He's bleeding but Diego isn't ready to administer first aid just yet. He wants to understand first. "We're- _he_ is Five, and so am I. But we're not _your_ Five. Not the Five you remember."

Diego considers that for a couple seconds. "Yeah that doesn't answer shit. Try again."

"How many of you are there?" asks Luther, sounding bewildered. 

"Five, I think," he answers and Luther rears back, stunned. 

"Including him?" Diego asks, indicating the boy.

"Four."

"Four of you?" he says, and doesn't make a snarky comment because now just wasn't the fucking time. "You're like what- from different timelines?"

Five's mouth twitches in an almost-smile of appriciation. "Good guess but no. The same people from different timelines can't interact. Or they shouldn't. Causes all sorts of problems."

"Then what the fuck?" Diego asks, out of ideas.

"It's a long story," Five says, sharing a look with Luther and something passes between them, some private communication and Luther relaxes the smallest bit. He looks up at Diego again. "How much do you know about clones?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it, the secret is out. (To be explored much more deeply in part 3)
> 
> Apologies again for making everyone wait a friggin' MONTH to read the last chapter. I got really sick and my muse fucked off for awhile and I had to go find her and drag her back by the hair. (It's okay, she likes it.) For anyone who is still reading...I love you. Please lemmie know you're still interested in the comments.


End file.
